Harry Bernstein
Harry Louis Bernstein was a British-born American writer whose first published book, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers, dealt with his abusive, alcoholic father, the anti-Semitism he encountered growing up in a Lancashire mill town (Stockport - now part of Greater Manchester) in northwest England, and the Romeo and Juliet-like romance experienced by his sister and her Christian boyfriend. The book was started when Bernstein was 93 and published in 2007, when he was 96. The loneliness he encountered following the death of his wife, Ruby, in 2002, after 67 years of marriage, was the catalyst for Bernstein to begin work on his book. His second book, The Dream, published in 2008, centered on his family’s move to the United States when he was twelve. In 2009, he published his third book, The Golden Willow, which chronicled his married life and later years. A fourth book, What Happended to Rose, will be published posthumously, in 2012.
Before his retirement at age 62, Bernstein worked for various movie production companies, reading scripts and working as a magazine editor for trade magazines. He also wrote freelance articles for such publications as Popular Mechanics, Family Circle and Newsweek.
Bernstein lived in Brick Township, New Jersey. He died at the age of 101, in June 2011.
“What wonderful things dreams are! They can make you be anything you want and take you anyplace in the world.”
“People get smarter. The human brain has a potential for development. Some day it will grow big enough so that everybody will see and understand the truth, and then we won't act like a bunch of sheep, and then that wall separates the two sides of us will crumble, just like the wall of Jericho.”
“We're not very different from one another, not different at all in fact. We're all just people with the same needs, the same desires, the same feelings. It's a lie about us being different.”
“There aren't many clean places left in this dirty world of ours.”
“But in that first flush of victory and happiness and relief, and God knows what other emotions were involved in this great moment, we were all very much one, and we were all in a state of euphoria, drunk with our happiness.”
“A sense of peace came over me and I must have been smiling as I fell asleep.”