Centropa Stories

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Aron’s  father was sure the Germans and the Romanians would never take Odesa.  And he went off to enlist to help make sure they wouldn’t. Meanwhile,  16-year-old Aron insisted to his mother they flee on one of the last  ships out. The rest of the family remained.

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Edward  Serotta introduces our wartime stories while walking through Babyn Yar,  where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered by German soldiers in  September 1941. The actor Shelley Blond reads an excerpt from a  remarkable memoir. When Petrowskaja asked her father what his  grandmother’s name was, he shrugs and tells her he was but four years  old. “Maybe Esther,” he says. And Maybe Esther walked to the edge of the  ravine in Babyn Yar.

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Perhaps  as many as 4 million Ukrainians starved to death during Stalin’s  enforced famine of 1832/1933. Sarah Kaplan tells us how, even though she  was but 16 years old, her mother married her off to a cousin from  Moscow, just to get her out of Ukraine.

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One  of our most colorful storytellers, Sophie tells us how one day, when  her mother was walking on the street in Kamenets Podolskii, a handsome  young man, an actor, asked for directions.

In  this short episode, we learn about growing up in a shtetl, fleeing a  pogrom, and what it was like living on a collective farm.

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The  actor Steve Furst reads an excerpt from Sholem Aleichem’s  autobiography, From the Fair. This most famous of all Yiddish writers  describes what it was like arriving in Kyiv in the late 1880s. As he  says about the big city, “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the  forest.”

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The  actor Steve Furst reads an excerpt from Sholem Aleichem’s  autobiography, From the Fair. This most famous of all Yiddish writers  describes what it was like arriving in Kyiv in the late 1880s. As he  says about the big city, “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the  forest.

She was born with the name Ruchel Kalef. During the war,  Father Andrej Tumpej gave her a name to hide behind: Breda. After the  war, Ruchel decided, “He gave me more than a name. He gave me a life.”  Thanks to Breda, Father Tumpej is now listed as a Righteous Among the  Nations. Breda became one of Yugoslavia’s best known mezzo-sopranos.

Jane  Bertish has appeared on stage in London performing George Bernard Shaw  and Tennessee Williams. Her television credits include Rosemary’s Baby  and most recently, Ted Lasso.

Rachel Chanin interviewed Matilda Kalef-Cerge for us 2002, and we have  remained in touch Matilda, who recalls both an idyllic childhood in a  wealthy Sephardic family, and how she, her mother and sister managed to  survive during the Holocaust. Read by Sara Kestelman, whose screen and  stage credits include the works of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Gorky and  Marlowe, not to mention Star Wars.

Few Jews live in Dorcol today but this quiet corner of  Belgrade still evokes its past, when Jewish shops stood cheek by jowl  and families scurried off on Friday evenings to synagogue.

Ida Labudovic interviewed Vera Amar and Avram Mosic for us in 2002, and both describe what Dorcol was like in its last years.

Jilly Bond, who reads Vera Amar, is a regular performer on BBC’s The Archers and has read more than 40 audio books.

David  Horovitch. With 100 screen credits to his name, David Horovitch has  performed Shakespeare on stage and in film, was recently seen in Mike  Leigh’s Mr Turner and is currently starring in the HBO Max series House  of the Dragon.