https://BTD.podbean.com In 2020, I sat down with my neighbhour Yara Blumel, a Berlin-based actress and performer. I asked her what inspired her career, that had seen her feature in renowned stage productions including ‘Rent’, ‘Chicago’ and Shakespeare’s classics. What she told me set me on a path I didn’t expect: she explained how the traumatic experiences of her parents who were children at the end of WWII, was ultimately why she channeled her energy into a career on the stage, escaping the tension at home and trying to understand the lessons of the past. Just 6 years old at the end of World War II, Yara’s mother and her family had been forced to flee what was formerly the German city of Reichenberg, and is now known as Liberec in the Czech Republic. In 1945, and after the fall of Hitler’s Germany, allied forces, including the US and UK, had come to an agreement on new territorial lines and this included the expulsion of Germans from border areas that are now recognised as territories divided between Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Amidst the estimated deaths of 60 million people, including the murder of around 6 million Jewish people, there were dire food and shelter shortages in Germany and wider Europe. Yara’s mother and her four siblings fled what is now the Czech Republic, finally ending up in Bavaria, where the family would later settle. In his book ‘After the Reich’, British Historian Giles Macdonogh recounts how, in the first days of January 1945, when the Soviet soldiers arrived in East Prussia, there was absolute chaos as women, children and the elderly fled. At that time, there were over 15 million German children, 250,000 of them were orphans and 1 and a half million were refugees from the east. Yara’s mother had never discussed what happened in those few weeks in 1945, but that year, and the years following, hung like a dark shadow. Yara’s story had me thinking: just how many children of WWII are there walking around, who are just like her mum - with stories that went untold amid a shroud of secrecy and shame. Was now the time to tell? In Behind The Door, I go on a journey to find out. Mon, 07 Jan 2019 10:11:03 +0100 https://podbean.com/?v=5.5 en de beforethedawn.ca History 1440 episodic A podcast about the books that inspire movies and television. New episodes every Monday! Before the Dawn No no https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/img/podbean-logo/podbean_71.jpg https://BTD.podbean.com 144 144 books,movies,twiilight,YA,literature,adaptation,romance,urban,fantasy,vampires,history,PA,post,apocalyptic,dystopian,news,trailers,discussionA Lit to Flick Podcastfeedback@beforethedawn.caBefore the Dawn