The Oppenheimers of Schwedt were a Christian family of Jewish heritage. The father, Ernst (Emil) Oppenheimer (1866-1942) converted to Christianity in his late 30's and married Magdalena Lewinsohn whose mother was Christian and father was Jewish. As the race laws in Germany affected all 'non-Aryans', all but two of the eight children left the country in 1939. Two emigrated to Sweden with the help of the Swedish Lutheran Mission and four emigrated to England. The eldest daughter remained in Germany throughout her life, married to an\"Arya\", never arrested and caring for three children as well as her parents. She lived in Schwedt until 1944 or 1945 when the Russians demolished the town and she escaped with her children to her sister-in-law in Bavaria.

Ernst Oppenheimer died in 1942, unable to eat or drink after his daughter Maria was arrested. Maria was last heard from in a postcard sent from the Warsaw ghetto in July of 1942. Magdalena Oppenheimer, his wife, was ultimately arrested in 1943 and sent to Terezin where she survived until liberation and returned to her eldest daughter in Bavaria. After spending a good deal of time in England with her youngest daughters and grandchildren, she returned to Germany and died there in 1957. As Dorothea was living in Sweden during the war, she was able to receive letters from England and then send news on to her parents in Germany. Miraculously, she had the foresight to save these letters and keep them with her along with some mementos from her home town. In addition, she took it upon herself to write down everything she could remember about her family and continued to do so after emigrating to the United States.