Max Amichai Heppner

I’m Max Amichai Heppner, a retired public information specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From 1965 to 1994, I produced press releases, pamphlets, speeches, and visuals about farms and farming.

Now that I’m retired, I record my history and thoughts. My principal product is a book, “I Live in a Chickenhouse.” It tells of my escape from the ghetto in Amsterdam during the Holocaust, and my being saved by a loving Catholic farm family in the south of the country. Each chapter centers on a drawing I made (or collected) while I lived in the chickenhouse; I tell the story from the viewpoint of the child I was at the time. The childhood drawings and the text that expands it parallel the Diary of Anne Frank, who lived down the street from me before the Nazis invaded Holland.

The book is freely available through my website and various booksellers; to promote it, I specifically target schools and colleges that study the Holocaust and relevant museums, such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The Chickenhouse book also was published in Dutch and German. A Swiss playwright also turned it into a theater play, which is shown throughout German-speaking Europe. An English version of the play, also titled, “I Live in a Chickenhouse,” is in the works, and a movie producer is considering a film version.

The Dutch-language version of the Chickenhouse story is: “Ik woon in een kippenhok.” The German-lanugage version is: “Ich wohne in einem Huehnerhaus."

I also give talks about the Holocaust based on my personal experience. My rescue was unusually well documented, and I have accessioned and contributed documents, photographs, drawings, and mementos as well as oral histories to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore and others. I also have prepared a documentary on DVD, slide shows, exhibits, and oral histories using these materials.