Family Ties – Broken
Elissa tells the story of her grandma Henrike Auerbach also known as Henny.
Henny was born in Vienna in 1920 to Berta and Pinkas Auerbach.
She lived an ordinary life until she was 17 when Hitler took over Austria and anti-Jewish laws were immediately imposed.
Using the video testimony that Henny gave to Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, Elissa shows the discrimination and segregation that her grandma and Austrian Jews suffered, a process of dehumanisation.
The story follows Henny’s journey to Leeds and her experience of starting a new life as a refugee in a strange country. In addition, Elissa uses documents and records to trace how her great-grandparents Berta and Pinkas fled to Antwerp, and Pinkas’s eventual death in Auschwitz. Elissa also discovers that her grandma’s aunt and uncles who lived in Poland were murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.
Family is a unifying theme of the story: the life-changing decision made by Henny’s parents; the efforts of family in another country to secure visas; and the scattering and destruction of a family unit.
This presentation is suitable for Year 8 + and adults and adapted for Years 6 and 7.
Richmond Rotary Club writes:
“Elissa was in incredible speaker. Her slides were engaging and the videos of her grandmother speaking really enhanced the story. It was the perfect balance of factual information and personal testimony, which made for such interesting listening.”
