Alice Schwab: One Woman’s Emigration from Heilbronn to England

Online Event

Baroness Rabbi Julia Neuberger DBE will be in conversation with Joachim Schloer, author of a new book about her redoubtable mother Alice (Liesel) Schwab. They will be joined by art historian Julia Weiner, who as curator of the Ben Uri Gallery, London Jewish Museum of Art in the 1990s, came to know Liesel well.

Carefully piecing together the personal letters of Alice ‘Liesel’ Schwab, Escaping Nazi Germany tells the important story of one woman’s emigration from Heilbronn to England. From the decision to leave her family and emigrate alone, to gaining her independence as a shop worker and surviving the Blitz, to the reunion with her brother and parents in England and shared grief as they learn about the fate of family members who died in the Holocaust, her story provides powerful insight into both the everyday realities of German-Jewish refugees in Britain and the ability of letters and life-writing to create transnational networks during times of trauma and separation.

Throughout her life Liesel collected art, befriended and supported artists, and was closely involved with both the AJR and the Ben Uri. As her obituary in the July 2001 issue of AJR Information put it, “A lifetime’s devotion to collecting and appreciating art led her to accepting the important position of AJR Information’s art correspondent, from where she informed and guided her regular readers for a quarter century.”

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This event is held in partnership with the Association of Jewish Refugees.