Hybrid Book Launch – Émigré Voices: Conversations with Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria

In Émigré Voices Lewkowicz and Grenville present twelve oral history interviews with men and women who came to Britain as Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the late 1930s. Many of the interviewees rose to great prominence in their chosen career, such as the author and illustrator Judith Kerr, the actor Andrew Sachs, the photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky, the violinist Norbert Brainin, and the publisher Elly Miller. The narratives of the interviewees tell of their common struggles as child or young adult refugees who had to forge new lives in a foreign country and they illuminate how each interviewee dealt with the challenges of forced emigration and the Holocaust. The voices of the twelve interviewees provide the reader with a unique and original source, which gives direct access to the lived multifaceted experience of the interviewees and their contributions to British culture.

About the speakers:

Dr Anthony Grenville, son of Jewish refugees from Vienna who fled to London in 1938, was born in 1944. He lectured in German at the Universities of Reading, Bristol and Westminster from 1971-1996. He has worked for many years with the Association of Jewish Refugees and was Consultant Editor of its monthly journal from 2006-2017. With Dr Bea Lewkowicz, he was responsible for creating the exhibition ‘Continental Britons’ (2002) and the first part of the AJR’s ‘Refugee Voices’ collection of filmed interviews (2003-2008). He has been Chair of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London, since 2013. He has published very widely on the history and experience of the refugees from Hitler in Britain, including Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria in Britain, 1933-1970: Their Image in ‘AJR Information’ (2010) and Encounters with Albion: Britain and the British in Texts by Jewish Refugees from Nazism (2018).