metro >> on the cover A Twist Of Fate Holocaust survivor and ex-Hitler Youth marry in amazing love story. Harry Kirsbaum I Contributing Writer CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Ruder matches an incredible story painted with broad strokes of history with incredible detail about his family. In one scene, he recreates an American bombing run toward the end of the war that destroys a train station, which has signifi- cant implications for his family. His mother is walking home from school with her friends when they hear the bomb- ers overhead. Her friends decide to take shelter in a church, but she decides she can make it home in time. Among the bombs that hit the train station was a bomb that missed its target and destroyed the church, killing Marile's friends. A day later, her father witnesses a group of Jews cleaning the debris left from the bombing and locks eyes with an intense- looking, gaunt Jewish prisoner who turns out to be Simon, his future son-in-law. At war's end, the Americans forced Marile to tour the local camps to see the total destruction and horror of the Final Solution. The girl who, before the war, proudly presented a bouquet of flowers to Hitler himself, recoiled at what she saw. She volunteered to work in a convent con- verted into a hospital, where she cared for Jewish survivors, including Simon. Simon, nearly hacked to death just before his liberation, quickly shows feelings for the German girl; she senses something, too, but she's not sure what it is. The courtship goes through many hard- ships; her parents are horrified she is see- ing a Jew, and Simon's survivor friends are equally horrified. Rudy is born out of wedlock, and Marile's old boyfriend appears after being wrongfully considered killed in action in Russia. The boyfriend wants to marry Marile, but shows his true nature when he refers to her son as a "Jew bastard" She turns her back on her family, her country and starts a new life with Simon. "I'm convinced she saved his life and gave him something to live foe Ruder said. "He's educated; he's worldly; he gets into a lot of trouble, then I came along. We found 50 love letters from my father to my mother and translated them all" The deck was stacked against them, but they made it anyway, immigrating to Cleveland in 1953, and raising five children, 8 April 16 • 2015 A Ruder family portrait, circa 1950: top row, Simon and brothers Mendel and Izak; bottom row, Rudy, Marile, Dolek and Alice, Izak's wife. three of whom were German-born. His father died in January 2006, and his mother passed four months later. "The marriage of two people of such oppositional backgrounds is not unique, but certainly exceedingly rare says Dr. Guy Stern, head of the Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. "The wife came from an ideological Nazi family; in fact, she was selected to be embraced by Hitler when the Nazi leader visited her hometown. The father survived Auschwitz and after the war was nursed back by the former 'Hitler Youth' The opposition on the wife's side of the family was fierce out of anti-Semitism and prejudice. The Jewish family was equally opposed from motives arising from the Holocaust" Compelled To Write "Writing about my parents was a profoundly personal experience," Ruder said. "After they died, I thought I had to write this book. I had to tell this story" He got together with his siblings to con- dense all the stories they were told. Then he did 18 months of meticulous research, much of it online through sources such as JewishGen.com , Red Cross International Tracing Service, Muhldorf Archives in Germany, Yad Vashem and at the local Holocaust Memorial Center, he said. "Mr. Ruder gathered information from HMC's strong archival holdings on family histories and the history of WWII and the Holocaust" Stern said. "He was also helped by our well-known archivist, Mrs. Feiga Weiss. He also drew on our library holdings and the extensive knowledge of HMC's staff, including Executive Director Stephen M. Goldman and many other staff members" Ruder added, "I visited the National Holocaust Museum in D.C., and the National Archives in College Park [Maryland]. We also had a number of fam- ily photos, letters and documents" A resident of Macomb Township, Ruder is a semi-retired consultant who has worked with General Motors, IBM and other corpo- rations. He spent time as an associate pro- fessor at Cleveland State University teaching computer programming; but he said his dream was to write this book, which he self- published and is available on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com. "It was like putting together a jigsaw puz- zle" he said of writing. "You knew a little bit around the edges, the pieces were the same color; then all of a sudden a lot of the pieces started falling into place" Included in his research is an American officer's report of his father's rescue and injuries, Nazi documents showing his father's trail through the camps, his uncles' German military service, his mother's report card and Hitler Youth enrollment and his grandfather's railroad service. "Did I take some poetic license? I had to" he said. "I wasn't there verbatim, but I understood the environment. The book had to be written; the story had to be told:' ❑ "The Long Journey To Cleveland" is available on Amazon.com or at www.phoenixbookworks.com . Yom HaShoah Commemoration Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) begins today (April 16) at sundown. The Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills will hold a corn- munitywide commemoration at 1 p.m. Sunday, April 19. Admission fees will be waived for the day and valet parking will be compli- mentary. For more information, contact Selma Silverman at 248- 553-2400, ext.112 or selma. silverman@holocaustcenter.org .