Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village
Reading and Talk by Mimi Schwartz

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
7:30 pm
BJE Jewish Community Library
1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
(415) 567-3327

Mimi Schwartz grew up hearing stories of her father’s village of Benheim, where “before Hitler, everyone got along.” It was only years later, when she saw a Torah in Israel that was rescued by non-Jews in Benheim on Kristallnacht, that she began to consider the import of her father’s stories. Schwartz interviewed current and former residents of Benheim, Jews and non-Jews, to answer the question of how good neighbors negotiated decency before and during Nazi times.

Mimi Schwartz is the author of five books, including Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed and, with Sondra Perl, Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Six of her essays have been Notables in Best American Essays. She is a professor emerita at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, and teaches workshops in memoir and creative nonfiction in the U.S. and abroad.

Co-sponsored by BJE Jewish Community Library, the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.