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Cynthia Crane
Cynthia Crane suspected that there was something mysterious in her family's past.
As a girl growing up in Ohio, Cynthia Crane suspected that there was something mysterious in her family's past. Cryptic conversations between her father and grandparents made her curious about what secrets were being hidden. She could discern the word \"Nazi,\" but it was not until years later that she understood what it had to do with the people she loved.Today Dr. Crane is recognized as a leading expert on Mischlinge,the so-called \"half-breed\" children who were persecuted by Hitler because of their families' mixed religious heritage. Although most were Christian, they were classified as Jewish, and were persecuted under Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. It is a subject about which little was written prior to Dr. Crane's thought-provoking book Divided Lives: The Untold Stories of Jewish-Christian Women in Nazi Germany. It is also a subject of great personal interest to Dr. Crane, as she eventually learned that her own father was a Mischlinge who had fled Germany as a child.
The discovery of an unpublished, handwritten manuscript of memoirs in her grandmother's basement led Dr. Crane on an intriguing eight-year journey of family and historical research, as she obsessively sought answers to long-hidden secrets of haunted people from mid-western America to Hamburg, Germany. The result is a poignant, inspirational and historically significant book that has won praise from literary critics,World War II experts, and religious scholars. Academy Award-nominated film director Agnieszka Holland calls Divided Lives a \"deeply human, non-conventional view of the Nazi time.\" And former U.S.Ambassador John Dolibois, an interrogator at the Nuremberg Trials, calls the book \"a well-written,intelligent must-read.\"
The process of researching Divided Lives had, at times, the elements of a spy thriller. Severely traumatized by their experiences during World War II, the women in Dr. Crane's book had never before spoken of the past, and were initially reluctant to do so with the author. As Dr. Crane quickly learned,many of the women were still distrustful of the German government, their neighbors, and even of the American stranger who wanted to interview them about a part of their lives they had kept protected for so long.
One woman was so afraid that she developed a special code to verify that it was really Cynthia Crane to whom she was speaking on the telephone, and not a neo-Nazi imposter trying to entrap her. Another woman agreed to be interviewed only on condition that her photograph would not be published. German government bureaucrats at times made it difficult to gain access to official documents that had been hidden away in files for decades. Dr. Crane tirelessly and passionately conducted interviews and pored over hundreds of documents in her search for the truth about this little-known aspect of history.
Dr. Crane is an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has a Ph.D. in English and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Cincinnati, an M.A. from Xavier University, and a B.A. from Wittenberg University. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious J. William Fulbright Scholarship and a P.E.O. National Scholar’s Award. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in various publications.
When not in the classroom, Dr. Crane is a frequent guest speaker at venues ranging from churches and synagogues, to colleges and Holocaust conferences. She has appeared on C-Span's Book TV, and has lectured at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. She has also been interviewed on such national radio programs as Doug Stephan's Good Day USA, and Daybreak USA on the USA Radio Network.
Although Divided Lives deals primarily with women’s lives and Germany, it also raises issues about identity, trauma, and strength of spirit. It is also relevant to many contemporary issues in the United States. Dr. Crane can tailor her presentation to many kinds of audiences, using her extensive research and knowledge as a foundation to discuss topics ranging from modern mixed marriages and families, to women and minority issues, to the media and propaganda.
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