Eyewitness Talk with Kurt Salomon Maier
Life and Trajectory of a Jewish Family from Baden (video recording available, in German)
Kurt Salomon Maier was born in 1930 in Kippenheim, in southern Baden, where his parents ran a store selling fabrics, shoes, and haberdashery. After the “Kristallnacht” pogrom of November 1938, Kurt was forced to transfer from the local public school to the Jewish school in Freiburg.
recording available
Where
W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)
On 22 October 1940, six members of Kurt Maier’s family – his parents, grandparents, brother, and himself – were deported to France during the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population of Baden and the Saarland. They endured several months at the Gurs internment camp in southwestern France before receiving an affidavit from relatives, which enabled them to emigrate to the United States. After passing through Marseille and Casablanca, the family arrived in New York in August 1941.
From 1952 to 1954, Kurt Salomon Maier served in the US Army, stationed in Germany. After studying German literature and history at Columbia University and the Freie Universität Berlin, he became a librarian at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. From 1978 until his retirement a few weeks ago, he worked as a librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
With the support of Berliner Sparkasse
Kurt Maier in 1941, shortly before leaving France; Jewish Museum Berlin
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Video recording from 28 October, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin 2024
Video Recordings: Watch Past Museum Events (85)
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Watch Past Museum Events
We film select events, such as conferences, panel discussions, book presentations, and our lecture series.
Event Series: Eyewitness Talks (17)
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Eyewitness Talks
In this event series eyewitnesses tell of their fates during the nazi era (video recordings available, in German, some of them with English subtitles)
