In/visible! 80 Years after World War II

On 8 May 2025, we will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the World War II. How do we remember? What remains hidden? What is rediscovered?

The event at BERLIN GLOBAL is dedicated to the diverse forms of remembering and forgetting. Through a lecture, film, and reading, artist Anna Krenz, activist Margitta Steinbach, and cabaret performer Sigrid Grajek explore visible and invisible biographies and fates, focusing on both individual and collective perspectives.

In a concluding discussion between Anna Krenz, Margitta Steinbach, Sigrid Grajek, Raimund Wolfert (Magnus Hirschfeld Society), and moderator Shelly Kupferberg, you will have the opportunity to ask questions and share your thoughts.

The evening is conceived as a collection of impulses – independent and standing side by side. We warmly invite you to be part of this mosaic of remembrance. Author and journalist Shelly Kupferberg will guide you through the evening.

In 2024, a tree in Berlin was named after Irena Bobowska – a poet, artist, and resistance fighter of the Polish underground movement. The 22-year-old woman, imprisoned by the Gestapo in Poznań, wrote poems and drew until her death in Berlin by guillotine in 1942. Thanks to the efforts of Polish activists, her story has become part of Berlin’s memorial space.

In a performative lecture, artist and researcher Anna Krenz tells the stories of Bobowska and two other extraordinary women who were active in the resistance in Berlin: Jadwiga Neumann and her comrade Stefania Przybył. Neumann offered her apartment for conspiratorial meetings and intelligence discussions, before being arrested and executed in Plötzensee. Her story fell into oblivion. Przybył, sentenced to death, made a spectacular escape from Moabit prison, leaving her sister behind in the cell.

The lecture addresses strategies for remembering Polish women in German memorial culture as well as the work of Anna Krenz, who brings their stories back into the public space through artistic interventions.

Production: Menda Yek Germany, Margitta Steinbach, Esther Bernsen (2024)

Margitta Steinbach (AMCHA Germany e.V. and founder of the association Menda Yek e.V.) travels with the members of her association to Poland to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site.

It is not only the older Sinti who want to return once more to the place of their ancestors’ annihilation to comprehend the horror their families endured. Their daughters and friends of the same age also join them, seeking identity and hope amidst the horrors of the past, the present, and their own future.

The documentary film “Leaving Auschwitz” explores the role of familial memory in remembering the victims of the Holocaust. Margitta Steinbach, the film’s initiator and producer, fights for recognition in German remembrance culture through her community work

Eva Siewert (1907–1994) was a German journalist, writer, and radio announcer. In the 1930s, she worked as the chief announcer at Radio Luxembourg and wrote for various newspapers. Due to her Jewish heritage, homosexuality, and critical remarks about the regime, she was persecuted, arrested, and imprisoned during the Nazi era.

In 1938, Siewert met Alice Carlé, with whom she had a close relationship. In 1943, Carlé was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. This loss profoundly influenced Siewert’s life and writing. However, Eva Siewert’s work remained largely unnoticed for a long time. To preserve her work and fate from being forgotten, the Magnus Hirschfeld Society initiated the digital memorial project In Memory of Eva Siewert. It provides biographical insights and makes her work visible again.

In the third part of the event, Sigrid Grajek will read selected texts by Eva Siewert.

Afterwards, we invite you to a conversation with Anna Krenz, Margitta Steinbach, Sigrid Grajek, and Raimund Wolfert (co-initiator of the project In Memory of Eva Siewert), moderated by Shelly Kupferberg. Here, you will have the opportunity to ask questions and share your thoughts.