Category Archives: family stories

At Home on Echo Lake

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Suzanne Loebl

For the past half-century, my husband of 67 years and I have spent our summers on Echo Lake in Somesville, Maine. This year we wondered whether we would make it. My spouse is not well, and I too have medical … Continue reading →

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An Announcement

Posted on June 2, 2017 by Suzanne Loebl

As many readers of this blog know, I have written two memoirs. One of them, At the Mercy of Strangers: Growing Up on the Edge of the Holocaust, is an account of my experience as a hidden Jewish teenager during World War … Continue reading →

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On Ice Cream

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Suzanne Loebl

All of us have foods that unleash floods of memories. For Marcel Proust it was Madeleine cakes. For me, one of those foods is ice cream. I simply love ice cream. In my birth town of Hanover, it was only … Continue reading →

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Olga and Serge Blumenfeld: Lifelong Friends

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Suzanne Loebl

I met Olga almost seventy years ago in Dr. Bodansky’s clinical laboratory at the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (SKI) in New York City. During the first four years of our friendship, we spent our entire working week together. … Continue reading →

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Maine 2016: Almost Farewell

Posted on September 17, 2016 by Suzanne Loebl

This morning I am sad. I just kissed Naomi—Branching’s editor—farewell. She was here visiting for a week at our small “camp” on Echo Lake. We did all the traditional summer things: a hike up Penobscot, popovers and Jordan Pond, dinner … Continue reading →

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Refugee, But Not Forever

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Suzanne Loebl

The other evening, after a satisfying dinner, I was lazily surfing the net when I came across a photo of a beach filled with Syrian refugees running across the sand, trying to climb aboard a rickety ship. Suddenly my heart … Continue reading →

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Farewell to Frank Hatch

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Suzanne Loebl

On Sunday, January 10th, my computer screen flashed. Caring Bridges, a site that provides health news to family and friends, let me know that Frank had died. I had spoken to Frank a few weeks earlier on his birthday. He had … Continue reading →

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Golden Gate Park and My Son’s Birthday

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Suzanne Loebl

This week a San Francisco friend sent me a picture of a visit he paid to the bench my husband and I donated to Golden Gate Park in memory of our child. The inscription reads: David Albert Loebl 2-19-56 to … Continue reading →

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Christmas 2014: Other People’s Holidays

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Suzanne Loebl

My mother was a Christmas junkie. I can still smell the pine aroma of the eight-foot tree that stood in our parlor in Hanover, Germany. Beeswax candles suffused the room with flickering light and a profusion of home-baked cookies weighed … Continue reading →

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Dr. Sigmund Freud, Uncle Alex and the Centenary of World War I

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Suzanne Loebl

A hundred years ago, when World War I was in its infancy, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria called up my great-uncle-in-law Alexander Loebl, Esq. and asked him to serve in his army. Uncle Alex had just graduated from law school, and though … Continue reading →

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