For the Living and the Dead. Traces of the Holocaust

In this episode, we talk about a photograph on the cover of a French magazine from 1938, showing two destitute looking women, stuck in so called No-Man’s Land. At the end of the 1930s, the emergence of “No Man’s Lands” symbolized the desperate situation of Jewish refugees who were expelled from countries throughout  East and Central Europe. Photos, testimonies and other source material that give a voice to survivors who stayed in these No Man’s Lands are scarce. However, Gerard Friedenfeld, who in 1938 found himself trapped in one of the No-Man’s Lands as a 14 year old boy, has given a harrowing account of his experiences and we can listen to his testimony.

Host Katharina Freise is joined by Michal Frankl, Senior Researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who investigates No-Man’s Lands and the fate  of the refugees who ended up in these desolate places.

Featured guest: Michal Frankl, Senior Researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the principle investigator of the project Unlikely refuge? Refugees and citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th century, which is supported by the European Research Council. Podcast host is Katharina Freise

Michal will tell the story of  Gerard Friedenfeld and the women on the magazine cover, trying to bring alive the situation in the No Man’ Lands. 

Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14 

In this episode we are presenting a story from Belgium, that of Norbert Vos-Obstfeld, his family and his teddy bear. Norbert Vos was still a baby when on 10 May 1940 Germany invaded and occupied Belgium. The family was Jewish and the danger to them was imminent. After an attempt to flee, Norbert’s mother found herself alone with her baby boy; the rest of her family and husband were already deported. To save her life and that of Norbert, the mother knew she had to go into hiding and she desperately tried to find a place. After several disastrous attempts, she and Norbert, almost by chance, finally found a relatively safe haven with a café-owner and his wife and daughter. It was with this family that they managed to survive the war, and that Norbert received a present from the little girl of the family: a teddy bear, a gift that he and the girl would hold on to for the rest of their lives until they donated it to Kazerne Dossin. 

The teddy bear is now part of the collection of Kazerne Dossin: Memorial, Museum and Research Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights in Mechelen, Belgium, where it is one of the most beloved pieces. 

Featured guest: Veerle Vanden Daelen, Deputy Director and Director Collections & Research at Kazerne Dossin. Podcast host is Kevania de Vries-Menig

Veerle will tell the story of Norbert Vos and his teddy bear, that came into the collection of the museum.

Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14 

In this episode, we will talk about mica-flakes, objects of little monetary value that were kept by survivors from the Theresienstadt Ghetto.  Also known as glimmer, the flakes, shiny glass-like, thin mineral sheets, were sliced from rocks with razor sharp blades by some women of the ghetto under forced labour conditions. 

On the one hand the flakes are a symbol of beauty, on the other of persecution and the ever present threat of not only food penalties beyond the normal rationing but, deportation to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, should the women make a mistake. 

Several of these mica-flakes are now in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, donated by the survivors or their children. Robert Ehrenreich, who works for the museum, has done extensive research into the mica-flakes and the stories of the women who kept them after their liberation from Theresienstadt.

Featured guest: Robert Ehrenreich, Director, National Academic Programs, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The views expressed in this podcast are those of Robert Ehrenreich and do not reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Robert will tell the story of Emma Jonas and her mica-flakes that came into the collection of the museum.

Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14 

In this podcast episode, we present the story of two Romanian boys, Sorel and Marcu Rozen, and a simple postcard. The Rozen family, made up of a grandmother, parents and two children, were deported from Dorohoi (a town in Northern Romania) in October 1941 to the Ghetto of Shargorod in Transnistria (now a Russian occupied part of Moldavia). Marcu and Sorel were 11 and 5 years old.
The living conditions in the Shargorod Ghetto were dire and starvation and diseases rampant. Within months after arrival, the grandmother and parents died of typhoid, the boys were left alone. Desperate for help, Marcu wrote a postcard to his uncle in Bucharest, with the message to “do everything in your power to take us out”.
This postcard is now part of the collection of The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, in Bucharest.
Featured guest: Ana Bărbulescu, Senior Researcher and Head of the Research Department at the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania.
Ana will tell the story of Marcu Rozen and the postcard to his uncle.

 Interview of Marcu Rozen is from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. For more information: http://sfi.usc.edu/

Music accreditation:  Blue Dot Sessions
Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14 

On 19 September 1941, Kyiv, capital of Ukraine, was occupied by the Nazi’s. Before then, Ukraine had been a reluctant part of the Soviet Union. Shortly after Nazi-Germany took hold of the city, it was decided to annihilate the Jews of Kyiv. On 29 and 30 September 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 33,771 Jewish civilians by shooting them at a nearby ravine, called Babyn Yar.

One of the main sources on the Babyn Yar massacre is the book Babi Yar. A Document in the Form of a Novel, by A. Anatoli (Anatoly Kuznetsov). Kuznetsov was born in Kyiv and fourteen years old at the time of Babyn Yar. Later he wrote an extensive eyewitness account, complemented with research, of wartime Kyiv (1941-1943) and what occurred at Babyn Yar. His typewriter is now part of the collection of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.

Featured guest: Karel Berkhoff, Senior Researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Co-Project Director EHRI.

Karel talks about Babyn Yar and Kuznetsov.

Music accreditation:  Blue Dot Sessions
Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14 

Listen to this trailer for an impression of For the Living and the Dead. Traces of the Holocaust, a podcast by the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). In this first season of six episodes, we speak with Holocaust researchers who talk passionately about a historic object that tells a very personal story about the Holocaust. Objects such as a teddy bear, mica glimmer, a magazine cover, gramophone records, a postcard and an old typewriter represent stories of the Shoah from all over Europe, from Belgium to Ukraine, from Romania to Italy.

Music accreditation:  Blue Dot Sessions
Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0). 
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14