When I was a little girl my father and I bonded over our love of stuffed animals. A specific brand: Steiff.  They are made in Germany.  My father was German, and made frequent business trips there.  He always came back bearing a new Steiff. They connected deeply to his childhood in Germany.  
My father was born in Breslau, Germany in 1928.  Breslau is now Wroclaw, Poland  My father’s family was part of a robust Jewish community there;  doctors, lawyers and musicians.  My grandfather fought for Germany in WW1,  earning the Iron Cross.
By 1939 when my father was 11, life had become untenable for Jews in Germany.  People were disappearing, picked up by the SS and sent to camps. My father’s family was now desperate to leave. They wanted to come to the US, but the US had strict immigration quotas 
My grandmother had to find a way to escape with her two sons.   A neighbor had two places on a Kindertransport . At the last minute she decided that she could not part with her children.  She asked my grandmother if she wanted the seats on a train going to Sweden.  
And so my father and his brother found themselves on a train a month later each with one suitcase in hand, and my father clutching a stuffed terrier named Sealyham. Upon disembarking in Stockholm, they were sent on to Uppsala where they spent two years in an orphanage for Jewish boys called Tullgarn.
Sealyham is now threadbare and missing an eye.  He’s traveled across oceans;  from Germany to Sweden to England, then Canada, and his final home New York City.  Carried by a child with a passport stamped “STATELESS”

– Stephanie C. Apt

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant