Within a year, little Ruthie Stern went from being called a dirty Jew to being called a dirty Nazi.

When the words "We don't want you around here!" and "Why don't you go back to the Fatherland?" were hurled at her, she rushed into school and ran to a corner of a playroom where she could look out a window.

"Even though I didn't make a sound, the tears streamed from my eyes," she writes. "My hero was a skinny 15-year-old kid named Alfred. His nose was too big for his long, narrow face. His curly hair was mousy brown, and he wore thick glasses. Alfred, doing his homework at a desk facing the window, was the only one who noticed. He came over, put his hand on my shoulder, and quietly asked, 'What's wrong, little girl?' I cried even harder when I felt his gentle touch and heard his sympathetic voice."

When Alfred learned Ruthie was being tormented by older schoolchildren, he became her protector – telling anyone bullying her, "If you insult Ruthie by calling her a Nazi, I'll deal with you. She left Germany because of the Nazis, you idiot!"

Ruth Stern Gasten's 2010 memoir An Accidental American tells the story of a young girl's journey from pre-war Germany to Chicago, Illinois. Weaving together childhood innocence and adult understanding, Gasten tells a tale that is highly-readable, poignant and compelling about growing up during a time when the future of the world hung in the balance.

"How ironic it was to have the Nazis drive us out of Germany to come to America and be called a Nazi!" Gasten writes. "I have experienced my share of sorrow and pain, but I have also felt satisfaction and joy from my relationships and from doing work I find rewarding. I am exceedingly thankful I became 'an accidental American.'"

This year, Gasten returned with her partner, Sam Stone, to the small village she and her parents had fled in 1939 to celebrate the release of her book translated into German.

"A German journalist Monika Felsing found my memoir, An Accidental American, on the internet and asked if she could translate it," the Livermore resident says. "Now complete, a book launch event was held in my little German hometown. Sam and I attended, and it was very touching since elders came who remembered my family and me."

The three-week European trip included the book launch in Nieder Ohmen, touring, and several talks given by Gasten.

"At the Oberschule Rockwinkel high school in northeast Bremen, the students are rather privileged upper-middle class," Stone says. "All spoke English, had traveled, and learned history including about Germany in WWI and WWII. Some 120 students came into the assembly room laughing and at ease. Upon seeing this sweet-looking little old lady, they smiled and took seats, folding their arms and waiting for her to speak about the pre-WWII experiences of a little Jewish girl. As Ruth spoke, the students laughed where she was humorous, and became gradually more serious as Ruth's story grew ominous. Their arms unfolded, and they began to sit up straighter. Those kids clearly got Ruth's well-told tale."

Ruth Stern was born on August 28, 1933 – not three weeks after Winston Churchill's first speech publicly warning of the dangers of German rearmament. Over the next five years, the Jewish Sterns, with Ruth their only child, watched with mounting apprehension as Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) gained power.

"Don't worry, Joseph," Ruth's uncle told her father. "The German people won't put up with Hitler's nonsense for long. They'll vote him out of power."

Despite wanting to believe that, Joseph said, "I see no hopeful signs. Good German people here are afraid that they will be turned in as Jewish sympathizers by their neighbors. Others don't want to get involved. Still others want to get rid of us. They buy Hitler's propaganda."

Although Ruth didn't understand what was happening, she sensed her mother's fear and father's uneasiness, and felt confused and afraid.

Then one night, "I heard the sound of loud martial music sung by adolescent boys accented by the accompaniment of their boots stomping on the cobblestones outside," Gasten writes. "My parents turned out the lights, stood in a corner of the dining room and furtively looked out to watch the Hitler Youth marching down our street. The boys had rocks in their hands. Whenever they saw lights on in a Jewish home, they threw rocks at the house. The tension in our little town affected everyone – grownups and children alike. Life in Nieder Ohmen would never be the same."

The marching turned out to be a prelude to Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) when, on a chilly November night, the SS (Schutzstaffel – the highly-feared Nazi police) freely attacked Jewish people and properties, leaving streets littered with myriad shards of broken glass. Soon after, Joseph was sent to Buchenwald, referred to as a Work Camp at the time.

Hannah, Ruth's mother, arranged a meeting with an SS Commandant to ask for the release of her husband with the promise the Sterns would leave for America immediately.

"The man behind the desk was silent for a minute," Gasten writes. "Then he turned to me and said, 'I have a daughter, too. She's six and her name is Trudie. What's your name and how old are you?' I replied in a quiet, frightened voice, 'Ruth. I'm five. My doll is Heidi. She's two.'"

Astonishingly, Joseph was home within a week. Though he never spoke about what he'd seen or endured at Buchenwald, he told his wife after the war, when the German government was ordered to make reparations to Jewish people, "We have enough. The people rescued from concentration camps have nothing. We'll assign our reparations to them."

This summer, nearly eight decades after she left, Ruth was welcomed back to Nieder Ohmen.

"The church where the book launch party was held flew the American flag in honor of my talk," Gasten says. "We filled up the church social hall. There were a few elders who remembered my parents and me."

For the little girl who remembers sledding in the moonlight because neighbors couldn't risk being seen with Jews, the trip must have felt like coming full circle.

"Ruth was a little nervous about how to present her book to German people. Would they be prejudiced? Would students understand her English?" Stone says. "But everyone was so kind, so happy to have Ruth speak, so full of questions. The ubiquitous question was, 'What do you think of Trump?' Ruth's story is important to remind us how easily a very fine nation may slip into demagoguery. We must speak out. We must vote."

Gasten, who moved to Livermore in 1963, worked as a parent educator for more than four decades and remains actively involved in community groups, including Interfaith Interconnect, a Tri-Valley group of community members and clergy whose mission is "To enrich, inform and educate ourselves and others about the great diversity of faiths and cultures in our valley." In Livermore last February, the group held its first, very popular Rally For Love.

As for Alfred, the young man who stood up for a little immigrant girl in Chicago in 1939, Gasten writes, "Two years later, there was a knock on our apartment door. When my mother opened it, a thin young soldier stood in the hallway. 'Hello, Mrs. Stern, I'm Alfred. I want to tell Ruthie that I'm going to help rid the world of Nazis so she never has to worry about being called a Nazi again.'

"By then I was standing next to my mother. He lifted me off my feet with a big hug and said, 'When I fight the Nazis, I'll think of you.'"

She adds, "I never saw him again."

An Accidental American is available on Amazon. The German version, Zufallig Amerikanerin, is available on Books on Demand, and contains more photos.

To learn more, visit monikafelsing.de, interfaithinterconnect.weebly.com, and ruthgasten.wix.com/speakers.