The making of “Keys: A Troubled Inheritance”

May 11, 2022

 

In this recording of a live talk, Mike Joseph tells the story of a story: his grandfather’s story started in Austrian Ukraine in 1895, then soldiering at the Russian front in WW1, while his grandmother fled west to Germany. Their German-born daughter was expelled in 1938 with her parents, back to Ukraine. She escaped to England but her family remained and were killed in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. After the fall of the Berlin Wall her son, a broadcast journalist, followed the family story back to Germany and Ukraine, encountering both perpetrators and protectors in the family narrative. His journey of discovery led inexorably to Israel-Palestine, where he discovered perpetrators in his own family. Mike Joseph is a current affairs broadcaster and historian of genocide. His programme credits include World in Action, Weekend World (ITV), The Hundred Year House (BBC), Tan Tro Nesaf (S4C). His current production: Keys: a troubled inheritance, uncovering the conflicted histories in his family inheritance, launches in 2022.

This talk was held on May 11th 2022.

Image: Mike Joseph in the station in Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine in 2006, having just met survivors of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941.

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