Somewhere in Europe: The World War II Letters of Sam Lesner with Judy Lesner Holstein and Roberta Lesner Bernstein (Zoom Video)

The Hyde Park Book Club hosted this event on Monday, November 15, 2021

Hyde Parker Sam Lesner, a journalist with the Chicago Daily News, also wrote the popular Hyde Parkers, All! column for the Hyde Park Herald in the 1980s.

At age 34 he was drafted into the Army and spent 1944-45 in the European Theater of Operations. His letters home, meant to be the foundation of his war memoir, ended up in storage while Sam returned to his life as the movie and night life critic for the Chicago Daily News, music teacher and performer, swimmer and avid gardener.

Years later, after his death, his daughters, Judy (above left) and Roberta (above right), found the letters and decided to publish the eyewitness account of a Jewish soldier proudly serving the U.S. Army in Europe to defend America and its European allies from the horrors of Nazism, despite the separation from his wife and newborn baby.