Dean Karayanis, presenter of the History Author Show on iHeart Radio, interviewed me today about “Stolen Legacy.”
This week, our time machine follows one woman’s modern quest to recover property stolen by Nazi Germany. It was only a single theft in the National Socialist State’s vast, systematic plundering of Jewish wealth, but the Wolff family’s story quickly becomes our story, and we find ourselves rooting for justice.
Listen to the podcast here.
The summer edition of B’nai B’rith magazine contains a lengthy article by me on the story of “Stolen Legacy.”
“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.
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.
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.
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.
