Anatomy of a Friendship: A Dual Memoir of Women's Journeys through War to Peace

Diane Tuckman discusses the collaborative memoir, a story of resilience and survival, that she wrote with her friend Cecile Spiegel. 

Diane and Cecile both fled religious persecution with WWII conflicts at their heels. Separately, from Egypt and from Germany, each leaped continents, cultures, and languages as a refugee before finding a new home in the United States. Hiding in plain sight in France, Cecile eluded capture by the Nazis, but lost many dear to her. Diane came of age there, far from the Mediterranean idyll of her childhood in Egypt.

They relied on family, faith, and resilience to overcome the otherness felt by displaced peoples. As they dictated their memoirs to one another, Diane and Cecile discovered the anatomy of their friendship in their parallel odysseys and the optimism of 20th-century American womanhood.

 Presented in partnership with Jewish Federation of Howard County and moderated by Shauna Leavey, Director of Community Engagement, Jewish Federation of Howard County.

Diane Tuckman was born in 1935 in Heliopolis, Egypt. At the start of the Arab-Israel war in 1948, her family fled mounting oppression. They settled in France, where Diane translated for American forces before moving to the United States. A noted silk painter, she is a founder of Silk Painters International (SPIN).  

Cecile Spiegel (1915-2010) was born in Nuremberg, Germany, the only child of loving parents. She escaped to France amid rising Nazi persecution. She survived WWII hidden in the countryside with aid from French Resistance members. Cecile worked for American forces in post-war France before immigrating to America, where she became a French teacher.  

Shauna Leavey is the Director of Community Engagement for the Jewish Federation of Howard County.  She has worked in Jewish education, advocacy, and engagement in the Baltimore and Howard County communities for over 20 years.  In addition to her work, her passions include reading, hiking, quilting, and exploring – despite the fact that she spends the majority of her free time driving her beloved children to and from their various activities  She lives with her husband, a public school teacher and entrepreneur, and three teens in Owings Mills, MD.

Copies of Anatomy of a Friendship will be available to purchase at the event.