Crossing the River: the 74 Year Long Shadow
Shalom Eilati will relate the story of his life, which began in Kaunas Lithuania like any other child until the age of 8, when the sudden German occupation of Lithuania forever changed the pattern of his existence.
Even 70 years on, the three years of Ghetto incarceration, his miraculous survival of several ‘Aktions’, and escaping and hiding as a boy on his own from the age of 11 years old cast a long, ineradicable shadow on the rest of his life.
It was only 30 years later, when he was a scientist with a family, that he found himself compelled to open the locked box of his memories.
Tonight, Eilati will talk about his book Crossing the River and describe the difficult 20-year process of retrieving his memories until the manuscript was ready for print. The various consequences – personal and social – following the book's publication will also be considered.
Music: At the end of the evening Tonie Ehlen, former teacher of piano at the Conservatorium Maastricht, will play the Pianosonate 1943 by Gideon Klein, a Jewish composer who lived from 1919-1945.
Directly after the lecture, the spotlight turns to the Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) project (www.stolpersteine.com) andwww.struikelsteentjes-maastricht.nl.
This is a European commemorative project by the German artist Gunter Demnig. The idea of this project is to lay a stone in the pavement in front of every house where someone was deported, with the person’s name, date of birth and the date on which he/she was killed. Many stones have already been laid in Maastricht since 2012.
Following this 4 May lecture, Studium Generale and the Jewish Cultural Heritage Committee Maastricht are organising a walk past several houses where stones have been laid.
The walk will stop at some of the houses to reflect and remember the deported person/people who lived there.
Actor Hans van Leipsig will say a little personal text at each of the stones which will be visited.
The walk will be accompanied by the musicgroup La Rosa de Maastricht
Organized in cooperation with the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights of de Faculty of Law