In the weeks before Valentine’s Day, CBS News will feature three stories about love that has not only survived but thrived despite daunting challenges. We call this series Love, Against All Odds.
On Saturday, Jan. 27, Werner and Martha Salinger celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary — a quiet moment to honor the determination that has kept their marriage together for so many decades. The couple hasn’t gone out much since they moved into an assisted living home in Wayland, Massachusetts, as Martha, 90, suffers from arthritis and is in a wheelchair, and her husband with great care tends to her needs.
It was a union some predicted wouldn’t last — but it endured, the 92-year-old Salinger said, in part to heal “the results of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.”
As a boy, Salinger escaped the genocide. He returned to Germany as a young adult and fell in love with Martha, the daughter of a Nazi soldier. Their anniversary, Jan. 27, happens to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day .