Regional Meetings for Descendants

Regular regional meetings for descendants of survivors take place in different locations, inter alia, in North-Rhine Westfalia, Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Berlin. These meetings provide an opportunity to exchange views, receive training and promote remembrance work.

The regional meetings were initiated during a pilot project in Cologne in early 2016. Past meetings hosted the following workshops: The journalist, blogger and podcaster Nora Hespers offered a workshop on how to write one’s own story and spoke about different ways of publishing. During her workshop, film director Carmen Eckhardt looked into the question whether and how the different ways descendants deal with their family’s persecution stories can be presented in film.

Theatre director Svetlana Fourer’s workshop presented a theatre teacher’s view on how descendants may use theatre to come to terms with National Socialist persecution.

Psychologist Michael Teupen looked into how the history of parents affects their families. Psychologist Alexander Bakalejnik and social educationalist Gert Levy offered workshops on “biography work and transgenerational transmission”. In their workshop, Christa Bröcher and Klara Tuchscherer gave insight into political education and remembrance work of the “children of resistance”. Peter Pogany-Wnendt, specialist for psychotherapeutic medicine, gave a talk on “The ghosts of our soul. Transgenerational effects of Nazi persecution”