Book presentation: Helena Ganor “Vier Briefe an die Zeugen meiner Kindheit” ("Four Letters to the Witnesses of My Childhood")

Four letters tell a story of love, horror and the power of resistance. Four letters show that tenderness and human warmth are able to overcome terror. Four letters provide hope. They narrate the story of an eleven-year-old girl whose mother and sister are murdered by the National Socialists. Separated from her father, she survived on the streets, with a tremendous will to live on. Decades later, as an adult woman in the United States, she writes down what she experienced. In impressive images, the author pays tribute to the lives, thoughts and actions of these four people in difficult times. She describes the carefree, everyday life in an eastern Polish village, with its coexistence of cultures and traditions, from a child’s perspective. And she gives account of the monstrous breach, the pogroms and murders that, starting with the German occupation, destroyed the girl’s hitherto ideal world.
 
Dr. Helena Ganor was born in Lwów in southeastern Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). She survived the Holocaust as a child there. After the war she studied medicine in Warsaw and worked as a doctor. In 1969, Helena Ganor emigrated to California, where she practiced as an internist until her retirement in 2005.
 
Conversation with the translator Eva Spambalg-Berend
Reading: Robert Reinagl
 
 
Free admission as of 6:00 p.m.
 
Advance booking is essential: Tel.: +43 1 535 04 31-1510 or e-mail: events@jmw.at
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The event takes place in compliance with the currently valid Covid-19 regulations.