Datum/Zeit
Datum - 13.04.2024
19:00 - 20:00
Termin im Kalender eintragen: iCal
Veranstaltungsort
The Munich Readery
Kategorien
Join us for a FREE English-language reading by Bruce Neuburger, author of Postcards to Hitler: A German Jew’s Defiance in a Time of Terror.
The true story of Benno Neuburger, a Jewish land investor from Munich, whose open acts of defiance against Hitler cost him his life.
The records of Benno’s arrest, interrogation, trial, and execution sat unnoticed in the archives of the Nazi People’s Court until 1989 when, with the unification of east and west Berlin, they became accessible to a wider body of researchers. Then the myth of German Jewish passivity to the Holocaust was challenged by the discovery of numerous acts of resistance by German Jews. Benno Neuburger’s story has drawn particular attention from German historians.
„This profoundly researched book tells the story of the postcards Benno Neuburger wrote and posted in a desperate act of resistance against totalitarian oppression. While the story is told in a genre of historical fiction, the author displays a deep knowledge of Munich’s local history during the Nazi era – both remarkable and unusual for one looking in on Germany from outside. The reader experiences the ever more stifling antisemitic measures through the focalization of those directly affected. … Bruce Neuburger maintains a high level of empathy – which is at times unsettling and painful when the author describes the details of an incidental encounter with stranger on a bridge over the Isar river or the cruel, sadist commands of an interrogator. In Postcards to Hitler, Benno Neuburger is the protagonist. However, the book is broader in scope, telling the fates of Benno’s relatives and embedding their stories within the overall historical lines. A book that has the power to draw you in and makes you think – about actions we do or do not take in our own times.” ~ Eva Tyrell, Public Historian, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt, Munich
The child of Holocaust survivors from Germany, Bruce Neuburger is a former farm and factory worker, cab driver, English as a foreign language teacher, and video arts teacher. He is the author of Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California, as well as numerous articles on social justice issues, especially the plight of immigrants.
