Relatively Speaking
Marla Allard, host of Maryland Public TV program “Relatively Speaking,” interviewed me about “Stolen Legacy.”
Here we are on set during the recording.
Author Archive
Sun Sentinel
“Event had major effect on people.”
That’s how Sergio Carmona, reporting in the Sun Sentinel, described the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s recent presentations in South Florida.
The program, entitled: “Stolen Legacy: Nazi Theft and the Quest for Justice,” examined “… the ongoing challenges of restitution and the museum’s resources, including the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database and the International Tracing Service archive, that individuals have used to research the fate of family members and to build legal cases.”
Many in the audience described what they learnt as both “fascinating and meaningful.”
And I am still hoping that someone will eventually contact me to say they once knew Joseph Rosner or his wife Sarah.
Stolen Legacy in Florida
It was a wonderful trip with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to three different cities in southern Florida – Sarasota, North Miami Beach and Boca Raton.
Two USHMM experts – Suzanne Brown-Fleming and Diane Afoumado – were with me speaking about the archives held at both the Museum in Washington DC and the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolson.
There was intense interest in the subject, with audiences keen to learn how to research their own family histories and seek information which might help them register claims on their own families’ Nazi stolen property across eastern Europe.
NPR recorded an interview with Diane Afoumado, Chief of Research and Reference at the Museum about resources available to help. There is still so much work to be done – about 80% of Jewish assets stolen by the Nazis and their collaborators during WWII have not been recovered.
Arizona Jewish Post
The organizers of the Shaol & Louis Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series, offered by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona, were kind enough to invite me. The event, held at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on March 6, was covered by the Arizona Jewish Post with a lovely article.
Korene Charnofsky Cohen, the reporter, accurately captured my summary of what, ultimately, the claim was all about:
“This was more than a quest for justice for mere bricks and mortar, it was to discover and preserve my lost family history,” she said.
Recovering a Family’s History
Sarasota Herald Tribune staff writer, Elizabeth Djinis, came to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum event at Temple Beth Sholom and here’s her report.
Gold spoke as part of an event held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., moderated by the museum’s director of visiting scholar programs, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, and featuring the museum’s chief of research and reference, Diane Afoumado.
Before the lecture, Afoumado also led private sessions with local survivors and those interested in learning their family’s history, using some of the museum’s research tools. One of those is the International Tracing Service, a paper archive formerly only accessed in Germany that can be found in digitized records at the Holocaust Museum.
The private sessions for those keen to research, as I have done, the fate of family members were of immense interest to the audience. Many were intrigued by what documents they might be able to unearth with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s help. This is a wonderful, free, service but, as I warned people at the event, you have to prepare yourself emotionally for what you might discover.