The Pilates Effect by Stacey Redfield

Author:Stacey Redfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Lightning Books
Published: 2019-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

A NOBODY IN AMERICA

The trip to America was excruciating. Carola first boarded a ship in Marseille headed to Oran, where she boarded a train that would take her to Casablanca. There she was herded into a camp, where she was warned to keep an eye on her things or they would be stolen. Several days later, Carola finally boarded the SS Nyassa heading to America.

The voyage was stressful. Carola was traveling in third class—no frills—and her roommate was a miserable old woman who died a few days into the voyage. Carola was given special permission to practice her roller-skating routine on the first-class level of the ship, which gave her some relief from the misery that existed on the decks below. The crew found her act entertaining and would give her food to show their appreciation, which she would share with her fellow passengers in the bottom of the ship. An unexpected stop happened in Bermuda, where the ship was boarded by customs officials searching and questioning the passengers, looking for spies. Carola feared that her intimate letters from Marcel would be confiscated as evidence of espionage and promptly threw them overboard. She stood watching what was left of the love of her life disappear into the ocean as a customs officer questioned her about her jeweled costumes, publicity photos, and roller skates that they found when they searched her luggage. The ship finally chugged into Baltimore harbor without even so much as a sign welcoming the passengers to America.

On August 3, 1942, finally on a train to New York City, Carola Strauss reflected on what she had been through. She had lived her dream, rising to stardom as a performer, her name in lights on marquees throughout Europe. She had experienced the greatest of loves, something that she was sure she would never find again. She had been arrested, sent to a prison camp, and eventually freed. And she was now safely on her way to New York—but her once vibrant, athletic dancer’s body was now an emaciated skeleton weighing only eighty-seven pounds.

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