Oma: Life on the Other Side of the Atlantic

Oma: Life on the Other Side of the Atlantic is the autobiography of Anneliese Cassidy. She was born in Fürth, Bavaria in 1928 and was recruited into Hitler's Youth at the age of 10. "We got every Wednesday off school to do things like make toys for the children of fallen soldiers," she wrote in her book. She also spent bomb raids in underground shelters and helped clear German fields of dead Russian laborers. After the war, Anneliese met and married an American, Bill Cassidy, and moved to Minnesota where they raised their family. She spent ten years writing her story down, primarily for her children and grandchildren ("Oma" is the German word for Grandma). In an interview published in The Northfield News on October 5, 2010 she said she had sold more than 300 copies, and whenever she ran out of the book, she simply had more printed at Kinko’s.