Where if anywhere do we feel we belong? Network Member David Gordon will introduce this subject with reflections on his experience of the impact of belonging on identity. This meeting, open to Members of the Second and Third Generations, is a chance to share our stories of similar experiences.
Start time 6.20pm for 6.30pm BST to give everyone time to set up and check their Zoom connection. Numbers are limited and Network members will be given priority. If you would like to attend this meeting, please email davidwirth@secondgeneration.org.uk. A Zoom link will be provided.
Archives for 2022
Thursday 26th April – Professor Mary Fulbrook – Bystanders
Please note the rescheduled date. Professor Mary Fulbrook will return to speak to the Network about her research into bystanding, complicity and perpetration under Nazi rule, exploring the transformation of German society in the 1930s and during the war. Network Member Naomi Levy will introduce and chair this event.
Start time 6.30pm BST.
Booking details to follow.
Tuesday 29th March – Restitution of Citizenship: What is involved?
Following Brexit many of us will have been considering how we can retain a European identity, and will have been prompted to apply for restitution of citizenship or at least to consider the implications of taking such a step.
Four Network Members will share their own experiences of making such applications for citizenship – Historian Anna Teicher (Polish), Psychotherapist Jon Blend (Austrian), Teacher David Wirth (Hungarian) and Singer/Songwriter/Guitarist Rosemary Schonfeld (Czech) – highlighting some of the practical, legal and administrative considerations, some also addressing their reservations and concerns.
There will be time after the presentations to ask questions and share your own experiences of applying for and obtaining restitution of citizenship, or deciding that such a step isn’t for you. Booking details to follow.
Sunday 6th March – Jewish Book Week tie-in with Simon May
We are delighted to be sponsoring this event as part of Jewish Book Week. Simon May, visiting Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, will be interviewed by Kavita Puri, award-winning journalist and radio broadcaster, about his recently published book How to Be a Refugee.
His powerful and moving memoir takes on questions of home and belonging that continue to be asked today. Most Jews living in Hitler’s Germany faced emigration or deportation but there was also the more unusual route of self-concealment in the shadow of the Third Reich: denial of one’s origins to the extent of erasing almost all consciousness of it, and refusing to believe one was Jewish. Simon, who was forbidden to identify as Jewish, German or British, reveals the very different trajectories taken by his mother and two aunts as they grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage.
The event will be at the St Pancras Room, Kings Place starting at 2.45pm GMT. Tickets £9.50.
For further information including booking tickets, go to: jewishbookweek.com/event/how-to-be-a-refugee/
Tuesday 1st March – Discussion Group Meeting: Missing Memorials
Have you visited a site in Nazi-occupied Europe where a relative experienced persecution, death or deporation, only to find little or no trace of the original buildings and no memorial or plaque recording the history?
By way of introduction to this group discussion, Third Generation Network Member Gabor Csanyi will share his experience of visiting the site of a slave labour camp in Austria where his grandmother was imprisoned, and the difficulty finding any traces of the site’s history.
This meeting, open to Members of the Second and Third Generations, is a chance to share our stories of similar experiences. Start time 6.20pm for 6.30pm GMT to give everyone time to set up and check their Zoom connection. Numbers are limited and Network members will be given priority. If you would like to attend this meeting, please email davidwirth@secondgeneration.org.uk. A Zoom link will be provided.
Thursday 24th February – Book Launch: The Journey Home: Emerging out of the Shadow of the Past
Second Generation Committee Member, David Clark, and Teresa von Sommaruga Howard are the editors of this new book, which has a theme of journeys undertaken by Second Generation Members, including several Network Members, in search of ‘home’ or where their parents and grandparents had lived. It contains 20 accounts of journeys to places connected with family history, including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia and Romania. A third of the chapters involve journeys with a survivor or refugee parent, another third without a parent and the final third in connection with a commemorative event. Each chapter reflects on how making such a journey changed perceptions of parents and family history, and impacted on identity and life choices. The authors also reflect on the mourning and grieving process facilitated by these journeys. The book also dwells on the search for belonging and identity, rendered all the more urgent and immediate by the reality of Brexit. This is a Zoom event beginning at 6.30pm GMT. Please register by going to:
https://thejourneyhome-booklaunch-24february2022.eventbrite.co.uk