Letters from Our Mother contains the letters that the author’s mother, Charlotte Lewy Gossels, had written to her two young sons in France after she had worked for a year to obtain visas from the French government to help them escape from Nazi Germany in 1939. Unable to obtain a visa for herself, she was deported to Auschwitz from Berlin early in 1942.The book describes the fate of the brothers’ family, how the children managed to survive the defeat of the French army by the German invaders, who occupied France, the care they received from Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants and their rescue by members of the American Friend Service Committee, who obtained visas for these Jewish brothers to come to the United States in 1941. The book tells the story of the education these young German refugees received, their marriages, the families they created and the contributions they made to their American communities and society.It is the story of the two young immigrants, who fled for their lives . . . and it is the story of America.