Eyewitness Talk with Kurt Salomon Maier
Life and Trajectory of a Jewish Family from Baden
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.
Mon 28 Oct 2024, 7 pm
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
Event Series: Eyewitness Talks (15)