Legacies and Heresies with blessings
Sunday, November 11, 2012
elana levy translated and published a selection of Rose Ausländer’s poetry in 2018. She reads from Ausländer’s work in the original German, and then her English translations.
My Aunt Edith Stein: Oral History Event with Susanne Batzdorff
May 15, 2011
Edith Stein, Carmel of Echt, Netherlands, ca. 1940. Edith Stein was Susanne Batzdorff’s aunt, her mother’s younger sister. Edith was a renowned philosopher, lectured all over Europe, and wrote many books and articles. She converted to Catholicism and in 1933 entered a Carmelite convent in Cologne, Germany. Edith was transferred to Holland after Kristallnacht because the Cologne Carmel felt that both the community and Edith would be safer if she left Germany. When the Germans conquered Holland, both she and her older sister Rosa, who had joined her in Holland, were deported to Auschwitz and gassed. Edith Stein was canonized by Pope John Paul II in Oct. 1998 and later named a Patroness of Europe. Her many literary works are now being published in 26 volumes and many of them have appeared in English translation. Susanne will tell you more of the dramatic story of her Aunt Edith and her impact on her Jewish family. She will also read from her book, Aunt Edith: The Jewish Heritage of a Catholic Saint.
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.
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.”
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.”
An Evening with Mark “Leo” Horovitz
April 25, 2009
“I am Jewish. I left Germany via a Kindertransport in March 1939. I lived with an uncle's family in London from March 1939 through August 1939. I was then evacuated to Saint Albans, Herts., UK. where I lived with 5 different families. My parents also escaped to London and I lived with them starting in 1942. In 1944 I was evacuated again - to South Wales… ”