A Celebration of Life
Afro-German, Berlin J B Afro-German, Berlin J B

A Celebration of Life

In collaboration with Dr. Dagmar Schultz, Ika’s life partner, JB and I created videos about Ika’s life. Ika was an activist, co-author of several books, author of Daheim unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben (Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany), artist, social counselor, anti-racism consultant, martial artist, and friend…

Read More
A Kindertransport Rescue: My Journey from Berlin to England to the USA

A Kindertransport Rescue: My Journey from Berlin to England to the USA

Photo courtesy of Ilse EdenIlse remembers “Kristallnacht.” After that, England agreed to admit 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children, and Ilse was chosen as one of a group of 12 sponsored by a Jewish pediatrician in London. She emigrated on March 15, 1939, and lived with these children until the outbreak of war, when all children were evacuated from London. She graduated from a boarding school in Cornwall at the end of the war, in 1945.

Read More
Wie ich zur deutschen Sprache gekommen bin | How I came to the German Language

Wie ich zur deutschen Sprache gekommen bin | How I came to the German Language

Born in Berkeley, CA, in 1940, Travis studied French and German at Berkeley High School and later added Italian at UC Berkeley. He spent his Junior year at the interpreters' school with these trilingual studies in Geneva, where his Swiss roommate taught him some Swiss German. Travis married Phyllis in 1962 in Berkeley and graduated one year later. He joined the Army to avoid being drafted for Viet Nam, and went to “Intelligence School.” In 1964, he was transferred to Munich where he and Phyllis spent 22 months, living in an apartment and wearing civilian clothes to his office, becoming immersed in the German language and culture.

Read More
Daheim Unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben
Afro-German, Berlin J B Afro-German, Berlin J B

Daheim Unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben

Ika Hügel-Marshall was born in Germany in 1947 to a white German mother and an African-American father. Initially, she grew up with her mother, but from her sixth to her fifteenth year of life she was raised—as many Afro-German children of her generation—in a children's home. Only at the age of 39 did she meet other Afro-Germans and was then involved in setting up the “Initiative of Black Germans” (ISD). In 1993, she found her father in Chicago and met him and his family—a most profound experience.

In 1996, Ika Hügel-Marshall received the Audre Lorde Literary Award for the completion of Invisible Woman. She has given numerous readings in Germany, Austria, and the USA.

Read More
Oral History and Poetry Reading
Poetry, Hamburg J B Poetry, Hamburg J B

Oral History and Poetry Reading

October 23, 2011

Angelika Quirk was born during World War II, in Hamburg, Germany. Her childhood was spent in this metropolis, a city flattened by war and ravaged by hunger. German culture, along with the Angst of post-war experiences and working through the trauma of the Holocaust, impacts her poetry.

Read More
Holocaust Survivors Reclaim Their Mother Tongue and Cultural Heritage

Holocaust Survivors Reclaim Their Mother Tongue and Cultural Heritage

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Spend a special afternoon with three extraordinary people who escaped the Holocaust via the Kindertransport to England. Rita Goldhor from Vienna, Leo Mark Horovitz from Frankfurt a.M., and Ralph Samuel from Dresden will speak about their lives and complex relationships to their first language, German, and its cultural environment. All three now reside in the San Francisco East Bay area. They will dialogue with one another and the audience.

Read More
An Evening with Rita Goldhor

An Evening with Rita Goldhor

October 24, 2009

“I was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1927, and I am Jewish. At the time of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany, I was not yet 12 years old, so there was much I did not understand about the political situation. I have never been to Germany - except passing through on a train to Holland in March 1939, on my way to England as a Kindertransport child.”

Read More
Ralph Samuel

Ralph Samuel

“I was born in Dresden, Germany in 1931 and in 1939 was sent alone on a Kindertransport to England to escape the Holocaust. I was educated in England including at the University of London, and the School of Economics, and at age 27 immigrated to the United States.

Since retirement, I have been on the Speakers Bureau of the Holocaust Center of Northern California speaking about the Holocaust and my experiences at Bay Area schools. I regularly speak to public and parochial schools, to single classes and general assemblies of 250 kids.”

Read More