INSIDE:

The Magical
`King Stag'

84

A 'Verdi' Good
Year For MOT

86

`Anne Frank' Comes
To Meadow Brook . . . 90

OC

'

n tare to

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

A

ll the time Deborah Oppenheimer
was growing up, her grandparents
remained silent, one-dimensional
portraits in a silver frame in the liv-
ing room. "They were always there but never
referred to," says Oppenheimer, who is in her
40s and the executive producer of Norm and
The Drew Carey Show. "I knew virtually noth-

Naomi Pfefferinan is entertainment editor at the
Jewish Journal of' Greater Los Aneles.

ildren saved

Austria, 1.938. Children
ing about them."
fi'0)12 GemanY -414i1ria' A,Til sadness that enveloped her
Czechoslovakia and Poland Her of
grief was vast and deep: ,
I kr elegant, refined mother,
we'?
put
on
trains,
taken
to
Sylva Avramovici Oppenheimer,
All Oppenheimer kneNy was that
f
rarely told stories about her
orts914
Hi
nd tiler' just after her I. lth birthday, Sylva
family Viennese waltzes filled
firrkd bigLind. had packed a tiny suit ca
. seand
the air at Oppenheimer's Valley
boarded a train alone for an uncer-
Stream, I.Y.s home; the German meals were
taM future among strangers. Her journey was
served on German porcelain, but there Was
part of the Kindertransport, a r es cue mission
scarcely a memento of Sylva's childhood in
that took sonic 10,000 children from Nazi-
Chem nitz, 'Germany.
occupied Europe to safety in England.
"I tried a few times to ask questions, but she
Sending her off wac a desperate act of love by
would start Crying, then I would start crying,
desperate parents, Oppenheimer knew. Sylva
and I'd retreat because I didn't want to cause
never saw them again. After the war, she read
her pain," the producer says. "I could sense this
ARMS OF STRANGERS on page 80

