Paper Kisses: A True Love Story - Tapa blanda

Publishers Weekly
Dismissed from his position at Greifswald University, [Rudolf Kaufmann] sought work in Italy, where, in the summer of 1935, he fell in love with Ingeborg Magnusson, a 28-year-old Swedish insurance company worker on holiday... Interweaving excerpts from their letters with information he gathered from relatives, [Reinhard Kaiser's] gem of a story provides readers with a fresh, intimate angle from which to view the devastating effects of Hitler's war on the world.

Forward, Elizabeth Frankenberger
That Kaiser took the time to introduce Rudolf and Inge to modern readers whose primary form of written communication is likely electronic is both rewarding and humbling. Covering the years leading up to Hitler's Final Solution, their letters serve as an obvious yet striking reminder that beneath every stamp lies a story one that, unlike books, is neither intended to be understood by a wide audience nor cataloged by the Library of Congress.

School Library Journal, Will Marston
The story is compelling, and the experience is similar to reading Anne Frank's "Diary." Black-and-white photographs and reproductions of letters and documents enhance the text.

Historical Novels Review, Lessa J. Scherrer
"Paper Kisses" is a story that will haunt the reader long after the short book is over.

The Jewish Exponent, Robert Leiter
"This is the saddest story I've ever heard."
I've borrowed the phrase to begin this review of a brief, sad Holocaust work called "Paper Kisses." It's written by Reinhard Kaiser, and has been published by the little-known but quite enterprising Other Press. Yet I mean for this famous phrase to be taken purely on face value. I do believe that, if this is not the saddest story I've ever heard, it's definitely one of them.
Kaiser only had one-half of the story to begin with -- Kaufmann's letters only. But with this evidence in hand, he set out to seek the whole truth, fill in the entire picture. He wishes to settle certain matters, as well as tell of Kaufmann and Magnusson's love affair, the happy moments and the unbearably sad ones. But he wants as well to know how these sweet, sad, personal letters were put up for auction in the first place. And he hopes to track down Ingeborg's half of the correspondence.
But perhaps most important of all, he wants to discover if either of these unfortunate people survived the war. Photos of the relevant players at various junctures in this history are also sprinkled about the text and only add to the mystery and the depth of feeling behind the story. It seems unfair to reveal any of the answers to these questions, but they are provided by Kaiser -- some of them only partial conclusions, others more certain -- in this tale of brief happiness, misfortune, and the vicissitudes of war and racism. The text of "Paper Kisses "does not even run to 100 pages, but the emotional distance covered there is enormous.
I repeat: This is, at the very least, one of the saddest story I've ever heard. But it is also a fundamental and imperishable tale of what happens to two fairly ordinary people, who only longed to be together during one of the darkest moments in all of history."

Traces the star-crossed romance of Rudolf Kaufmann, a young Jewish geologist, and Ingeborg Magnusson, a gifted young Swedish woman, who fell in love over the course of a brief visit to 1935 Italy and shared a correspondence until Rudolf disappeared in 1941. Original.