Accompanying programme to the exhibition "Our Courage. Jews in Europe 1945‒48"
31 March 2022, 7 pm
A Childhood in the DP camp Föhrenwald
Contemporary Witness Talk with Abraham Ben
Between 1945 and 1957 there was a camp for Jewish Displaced Persons in Föhrenwald in Upper Bavaria. In the "last shtetl in Europe", as it was known among the inhabitants, Yiddish was spoken almost exclusively; there was hardly any contact with the German population. Abraham Ben (*1947), son of Polish Holocaust survivors, lived in various DP camps until he was nine years old, including a long time in Föhrenwald. In a contemporary witness talk with Dr. Katharina Friedla (Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris) he tells of his memories of this special place. With a historical introduction by Dr. Angelika Königseder (Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism at the TU Berlin).
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5 May 2022, 7 pm
A New Start in Germany, Border Crossings in Berlin: Jewish Displaced Persons 1945-1948 Lecture event and podium
After the Second World War, thousands of Holocaust survivors found refuge in Berlin as Displaced Persons. Together with the We Refugees Archive, we will look at the fate of Jewish DPs as a whole as well as their specific significance for Berlin. The researchers Prof. Atina Grossmann (The Cooper Union, New York) and Dr. Miriam Schulz (University of Toronto) will present this special chapter of European post-war history. Moderation: Dr. Anne von Oswald (We Refugees Archive, Berlin)
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19 May 2022, 7 pm
Escaping the Holocaust. Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1946) Lecture by Dr. Markus Nesselrodt
About 230,000 Polish Jews survived the Second World War inside the Soviet Union. The lecture by Dr. Markus Nesselrodt is dedicated to the various paths of Polish Jews from occupied Poland to Soviet territory. What was everyday life like on the "periphery of the Holocaust" (Yehuda Bauer) in Soviet exile and how did Polish Jews return to their destroyed homeland after the Second World War? What was waiting for them there? With his lecture "Escaping the Holocaust: Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1946)", historian and book author Markus Nesselrodt presents this complicated story of escape and survival.
Moderation: Andrea Moll (Curator Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Berlin)
Free Admission
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6. July 2022, 7 pm
Displaced
Film screening and discussion with film director Sharon Ryba-Kahn
Sharon Ryba-Kahn was born in Munich and has lived in Israel, France and the USA. For the past 14 years, she has been living in Germany again. Ryba-Kahn's paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her father was born in a Bavarian DP camp in 1947. However, his experiences were never discussed in the family. In her second - current - documentary film "Displaced", which was released to cinemas in November 2021 she confronts her family history and her difficult relationship with Germany. For this purpose, the director also resumes contact with her father after years of radio silence and visits him in Israel, where he lives today.
Germany, 2020, 87 min.
Film:
English language with German subtitles
Free admission
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31 August 2022, 7 pm
Hans-Hermann Klare: Auerbach
Book Premiere and Discussion with the Author
In April 1952, a sensational trial began at the Munich Regional Court. The defendant was the most prominent Jew in Germany after World War II: Philipp Auerbach. He had survived Auschwitz and stood up for the Holocaust survivors like no other. His judges, former Nazis, convicted him of minor offences. Auerbach took his own life on the same day.
His fate is symbolic of the fact that there was no such thing as a new start after the war. That old elites became new ones and anti-Semitism lived on.
Hans-Hermann Klare's biography puts the post-war period in a new light. It resurrects a world in which hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Germany had to fight for a life in dignity.
Hans-Hermann Klare was an author and senior editor at "Stern" for many years. His reportages deal with the end of apartheid in South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda and the indigenous uprising in Mexico. He has been involved in UN refugee aid in Germany for many years.
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15 September 2022, 7 pm
Das Zelig
Film screening and discussion with film director Tanja Cummings
Some of the world’s last remaining Holocaust survivors with roots from all over Europe meet every week at Café Zelig in Munich, Germany. They get together to laugh and celebrate holidays, to argue and discuss various topics, but they also hold moments of silence and mourning. Some of them, and some of their children, undertake a journey into their past, back to their old home country Poland. And they talk about the difficulties they had, and still have, finding their way back to life.
D, 2020, 96 min
Languages: German, Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish
With German subtitles
Free admission
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