Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

Matthew Sweet looks at the experiences of Portuguese Jewish and Roma communities.

Matthew Sweet reads a novel about a Portuguese Jewish family, hears about the drawings of French Jewish children, looks at German Jewish writers and research on a Roma shrine.

Romani history and how mass murder is intertwined with a modern day pilgrimage site and the experiences of Portuguese Jewish communities are discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests. Richard Zimler's talks about his latest book, The Incandescent Threads; Stuart Taberner reflects on the ways modern writers connect to the Holocaust; Victoria Biggs has been researching a pilgrimage site close to a place of mass murder and Daniel Lee looks at the drawings left behind by the children of the Maison d'Izieu.

Richard Zimler has written twelve novels that have been translated into twenty-three languages. The Incandescent Threads is the latest in his Sephardic Cycle, a group of works that explore the lives of different branches and generations of a Portuguese-Jewish family, the Zarcos. He was a finalist for the US Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award. 

Stuart Taberner is Professor of German Literature at the University of Leeds. He works on literary responses to the Holocaust and German Jewish identities.
 
Daniel Lee is a senior lecturer in modern French history at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of The SS Officer's Armchair. He is a BBC Radio 3 Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker.  You can hear him on previous episodes discussing Writing a life and biography with Hermione Lee and Rachel Holmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n6vj and looking at WWII radio propaganda and French relations https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hwz9 

Victoria Biggs is La Retraite Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. She researches memory, pilgrimage and the genocide of Roma people during the Holocaust. 

Producer: Ruth Watts

Available as the Arts & Ideas podcast and on BBC Sounds are previous Free Thinking discussions about 
Jewish Identity in 2020: Howard Jacobson, Bari Weiss, Hadley Freeman and Jonathan Freedland  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwqd 
Jewish history, jokes and contemporary identity: Simon Schama and Devorah Baum https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098hz1m
Links between Judaism and Christianity: Giles Fraser talks to Matthew Sweet, Miri Rubin and David Feldman https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vhgz 
Nazis, Holocaust, Time and Memory: Richard J Evans, Jane Caplan and David Cesarani. Andre Singer and Eva Hoffman  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0506lp0 
Remembering Auschwitz: Anne Michaels, Gerald Jacobs, Laurence Rees, Roland Clark, Anna Prazmowska, Stephen Smith   
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dq00 
Yishai Sarid, Marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2022: Roland Clark, Joseph Cronin, Allis Moss and novelist Yishai Sarid https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013sp7
Yiddish and Rotwelsch Languages, Nazi France : Michael Rosen and Martin Puchner, Ludivine Broch and Stephanie Hesz-Wood  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rlv7

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