My American Dream: A Journey from Fascism to Freedom

On August 4, 1940, the Seattle Times featured a photo of a toddler sitting on a dock, surrounded by suitcases and looking dazed. After a harrowing journey with her parents, she’d just stepped off a boat and into her new life in America. Barbara Sommer Feigin was that little girl.

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Over seventy years later, Feigin made a stunning discovery: her Jewish father had kept a detailed journal that chronicled their family’s escape from Nazi Germany. Her parents had never spoken of it, and she remembered nothing of their terrifying, death-defying passage three-quarters of the way around the world—from Berlin to Seattle by way of Lithuania, Russia, China, Korea, and Japan before crossing the Pacific.

My American Dream is a memoir of resilience, grit, and grace that starts with the entire text of Feigin’s father’s journal, relating in his own words the terrifying details of the family’s escape. Feigin goes on to weave together three intertwining narratives of her own life. She tells of being a young, German-speaking refugee living in a small Washington town and yearning to become an “authentic” American. She details how she became a trailblazing executive in the advertising business in New York City—a completely male-dominated business in the 1960s—rising from the ranks and ultimately securing a seat in the executive boardroom. A devoted wife and mom of three sons (including one set of twins), she spent twenty-five years as a caregiver for her husband, who suffered two serious strokes, and remained fiercely committed to building strong family bonds during turbulent times.

Despite overwhelming odds, her parents’ grueling journey to America has fueled Feigin’s lifelong resolve to dream big, work hard, and never quit. My American Dream is an inspiring tale of love, dedication, and how uncovering the past and preserving history can inform your identity.

What people are saying

  • “I have long known Barbara Feigin as a true pioneer in the world of advertising. A woman, in a world of men, who rose to positions of power and commanded respect. What I never knew was her remarkable life story. This book captures the most American of tales, achievement of the American dream—complete with an escape from the Nazis. It’s a fascinating read, told with love and warmth.”

    —Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus, Ogilvy and Mather

  • “Barbara Feigin is an extraordinary woman whose memoir only increases my respect and admiration for her brilliance and determination. Overcoming a childhood of poverty and isolation, Barbara rose to become a senior executive in the male-dominated advertising business of the 1960s, all while raising three devoted sons and caring for her beloved husband. She has written a truly remarkable story that will inspire and enlighten all who read it.”

    —Robert Berenson, retired president, Grey Advertising

  • “Readers will be deeply impressed by Feigin’s perseverance in the face of remarkable adversity. Her father’s account of the family’s narrow escape from Hitler’s thugs is exhilaratingly dramatic.”

    —Kirkus Reviews

  • “Opposites are reconciled in Barbara Feigin’s startling and candid memoir. At a moment when our awareness of the sins of human behavior seems to make cheerleading American patriotism difficult, My American Dream combines revelations of antisemitism, bigotry, and sex discrimination and a celebration of the United States. Affirmation of love, friendship, marriage, parenting, and caregiving accompanies a driving and competitive ambition in what becomes a feminist rags-to-riches story.”

    —Robert Allen Skotheim, president emeritus, Whitman College, Occidental College, and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

  • “Barbara Feigin’s My American Dream is an immensely engaging autobiography, as honest and straightforward and generous as its author. Beginning in 1940 with her escape from Nazi Germany across Europe and Asia, the book follows her through her hardscrabble childhood in Chehalis, Washington; her rigorous education at Whitman College and the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration; her marriage and children (three sons, as engaging as their mother); and her outstanding career at Grey Advertising. At every stage, the story is propelled by her optimism, her determination and resilience, her inventiveness, her work ethic, her pride in her achievements, and her lack of vanity. The book’s recurring themes, as with so many immigrant stories, are a roadmap to the American dream: support of family, friends, and colleagues; the value of education; the importance of work and doing your best; the recognition of good luck even in the face of hardship. Feigin wrote this book originally for her children and grandchildren so they might understand her immigrant journey. How lucky we all are to have her share it.”

    —Susan Rieger, critically acclaimed author, The Divorce Papers and The Heirs

  • “In My American Dream, Barbara Feigin has written a timely and important autobiography of the classic American Dream. She knits together several powerful stories: those of European Jews fleeing the Holocaust, those of immigrants from all over the world seeking a better life in America, and those of a woman forging a path toward motherhood and career success in the male-dominated advertising industry. In our polarized political and societal climate, at a time when we need to be reminded of America’s extraordinary achievements and that the United States remains a bright beacon of hope and the land of opportunity for the rest of the world, Barbara’s My American Dream compellingly refreshes our shared history and ideals.”

    —Anthony E. Meyer, past chair of the Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee, chair of the Board of the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, and serial and social entrepreneur

  • “Many memoirs are self-aggrandizing. Not this one. Alternately harrowing, poignant, and funny, but always insightful and inspirational, this story about a Holocaust survivor, trailblazing advertising executive, and devoted wife and parent could be about three different people—but is in fact about one extraordinary woman. Those who get to know Barbara Sommer Feigin and her American dream are better for it.”

    —Carl Goodman, president & CEO, The Florida Holocaust Museum

An Excerpt from the Introduction

One morning in 2013, when I’m in my office in New York City, my phone rings. It’s my sister, Carolyn, calling from Annapolis, Maryland, where she and her family have lived for many years. Carolyn and I speak regularly to post each other on family happenings, and I’m expecting this call to be a routine catch-up call. But it’s not; this call is different.

Carolyn tells me she has amazing news for me. She says she’s found a detailed journal among my late father’s papers, one he wrote before and during the terrifying escape our family—my Jewish father, my mother, and I, at two-and-a-half years old—made in 1940, at the onset of World War II, from Nazi Germany to Yokohama, Japan, and then across the Pacific Ocean to Seattle and finally to Chehalis, a small farming and logging town in southwest Washington State, where we settled.

I am dumbfounded—shocked, to learn this journal exists. Of course I’ve always known that our family made this escape, but not a single detail beyond that. I remember nothing, and my parents never spoke of it. For me, though I was born on November 16, 1937, in Berlin, it was as if our family’s life began when we arrived in America. For years I’ve talked with Carolyn about having a gaping hole in our history. And now at long last, when I’m seventy-five years old, I’ll be able to fill that hole.

Pages from my father’s journal