It was the 60th anniversary of Mattson arriving in the United States, a 10-year-old girl whose parents sent her to San Francisco to escape the Nazis. That girl grew up to travel the world, become a college professor and write her memoirs of being separated from her parents, including one who fell victim to a German concentration camp. Mattson recently published War Orphan in San Francisco with the local Stevens Creek Press.

The party was where Mattson, 75, first decided to pursue writing her memories full bore. "I had written the first chapter of my journey to America, and they were willing to sit there and listen to me," she said. "Afterwards, they all had wonderful things to say. They sent thank you cards and said that I affirmed their being American, that it helped them appreciate their own patriotism."

At that point, Mattson began pursuing a book by rifling through hundreds of letters that she had exchanged with her parents during the six-year period she lived with relatives in San Francisco. She ended up there in 1940 after an arduous journey from Vienna, where she spent her younger childhood years. Her parents were Polish, but after Adolf Hitler's regime took over, their passports were no longer valid.

Mattson's father was imprisoned for a short time and then released, told to leave the country within a week. He traveled to the United Kingdom under a refugee plan with that nation, leaving Mattson and her mother in Vienna. The plan had originally been for the two to travel to England as well, but before that could happen, war between the UK and Germany was on.

The U.S. was accepting a certain number of Jewish children, though Mattson said it was kept very quiet. "England allowed 10,000 children to come in 1936 or earlier, and it was in the news in the UK," Mattson said. "There was something like that going on in the U.S., but because there was some anti-Jewish feeling, they kept the press away."

Mattson's mother turned to an aunt in San Francisco and sent an affidavit, requesting that Mattson live with them. And so, in April 1940 the 10-years-old Mattson traveled through Italy before boarding a ship to New York. When she arrived in the U.S., she took a train by herself to San Francisco. "I only knew a few words of English," she said. Once she arrived in San Francisco, she had to live in an orphanage before her aunt could claim her.

While living in a completely foreign culture, Mattson kept in touch with her parents by letter. She continued to write in German to her mother, but used English with her father. Like other German refugees in the UK, he was sent to the Isle of Man, and later shipped to Australia as a prisoner of war. He and Mattson continued their correspondence until he finally managed to secure passage to the U.S. in 1946—six years after Mattson arrived.

As for her mother, Mattson wasn't entirely sure what happened to her until recently. "My mother tried to come to the U.S.—her letters were desperate," she said. "But the Germans sent her to Germany, and after that, there were no more letters." Mattson eventually learned that her mother, Laura Finkel, was killed at the Maly Trostinec concentration camp near Minsk in 1942.

Mattson has spoken about her experience as a "war orphan" at area schools as part of an affiliation with the Jewish Family Center. Allene Morales, an English teacher at Independence High School, has seen Mattson speak in front of as many as 1,000 students a day.

Though survivors of concentration camps have spoken at Independence, Morales said that Mattson's story is still important for the full picture of the Holocaust. "She has a good presentation and command of the audience," Morales said. "She's learned to speak with kids, and they're always appreciative of what she has to say."

Her speaking skills aren't an accident. After attending UC-Berkeley for a degree in anthropology, and doing graduate work in Boston and Wisconsin, Mattson has been an instructor at De Anza and Foothill colleges for almost 28 years. She currently teaches anthropology and works in the writing lab—Mattson speaks English now with no noticeable accent, and said she doesn't remember how to speak German at all.

Earlier in her career, she taught health science and published an academic book titled Holistic Health in Perspective 20 years ago. She resumed her career after divorcing her husband, and now has two children living in Southern California and one grandchild. Her childhood taught her how to travel, and she spent some time in Nepal in 1994 after joining the Peace Corps. Mattson also taught English in China for a year, and has taken friends back on tours on three separate occasions.

Another place she has visited is Vienna, but with the language barrier, Mattson has found it difficult to connect with her remaining relatives there. Instead, she finds more connections to her family through the letters she saved, even though her father died in 1970. Many of those same letters appear in her book.

"At first, it took a lot of labor to read and reread the letters," she said. "But I felt my parents were really loving parents. I was not abandoned because of the letters."

For more information on Mattson's book, visit www.stevenscreekpress.com.