I thank Merriam Webster's online student dictionary for the neutral definition of euthanasia.
"The Story of Anny Wodl" is taken from an English translation of testimony given at the Nuremberg trials. I borrowed Frederich Holderlin's last name for Stephanie. Holderlin (1770-1843) was a major German lyric poet.
Nelly and Paul, two of the children in the cabin, were named after Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) and Paul Celan (1920-1970)—the two greatest German Jewish poets of the Holocaust. Sachs was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature; Celan committed suicide in Paris.
It is believed that 200,000 to 2,000,000 Gypsies were killed in the Romani Holocaust, also called Porajmos, which means "devouring" in the Romani language.
For readers, teachers, and parents interested in learning more about the Nazi's Action T4 euthanasia program, a good place to start is the online exhibition on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The book that originally got me interested in the subject is Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, by Horst Biesold (Gallaudet University Press).
Many thanks to my sister, Jean Marie LeZotte, my brother, Peter George LeZotte, and my sister-in-law, Jennifer LeZotte. And to my dog friend/helper May, her dog Basho, and Pebbles and Twister for keeping me laughing.
Special thanks to Sid Fleischman, Shelly Ruble, Mari Lu Grant, my Dog Wood Park friends, Jenny Moussa, and to my editor, Margaret Raymo, for seeing what I was trying to do and helping me do it—beyond what I'd ever imagined.
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About the Author
Ann Clare LeZotte is completely deaf from a birth defect and illness. As a young girl in Long Island, New York, she banged her head for hours at a time and created her own world. She had a percentage of hearing in one ear during her grade school years, which helped her learn to speak, lip read, and assimilate into hearing culture. She has gone through years where she communicated mostly using a pad and pencil. She learned American Sign Language in her early twenties. A 1991 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has had her poems published in the American Poetry Review, the New Republic, and the Threepenny Review. She received fellowships from Hedgebrook, the MacDowell Colony, VCCA, and Yaddo, as well as a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her younger sister and their three dogs and one cat.
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