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Ursula Duba |
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Ursula Duba is a poet, author, teacher and lecturer based in Stony
Creek, Ct. The main focus of her writing is the Holocaust, the
Third Reich and the complex legacy of those historical events.
Among her published works are Tales From A Child Of The
Enemy, Penguin 1997, and the essay Germany-The Legacy Of
Bystanders, Cowards, Desktop Murderers And Executioners,
Yale University 1999. Works in progress include the book
Inherited Pain & Defective Genes - Descendants of the Shoah
and the Third Reich, based on three years of research and over
50 in-depth interviews with sons and daughters of Holocaust
survivors and German gentiles in the U.S., Germany and Israel;
the novel This Child Doesn't Look Very Aryan, the story of an
average family living in Hitler Germany; and a collection of essays
elaborating and analyzing Duba's experiences while participating in
German/Jewish dialogues, accompanying German-Jewish emigres
back to their home towns as guests of honor, the isolation and
lack of support of German gentiles who want to research their
family's history during the Nazi regime, and the scarce creative
output by German gentiles to address the legacy of the Hitler
regime on a personal and societal level.
Duba's experiences during her upbringing and adult life have given
her a unique insight and perspective into both the Holocaust and
the Nazi regime. She was born shortly before the outbreak of
WWII in Cologne, Germany, to a non-Jewish family. She grew up
during the impenetrable silence of the postwar years in Germany
and trained to be a translator and interpreter at the time. For the
first time in her life, at the age of nineteen, she was confronted
with the knowledge of the Holocaust during a trip abroad. That
pivotal experience led her to spend a year on a kibbutz in Israel in
the early sixties where she had her first encounters with Holocaust
survivors. She has since made more than a dozen trips to Israel.
In 1965, she and her former husband, whose parents had both
been refugees from Nazi Germany, immigrated to the U.S. For
the first four years, they lived in an Eastern European
neighborhood in Brooklyn among refugees and Holocaust
survivors. The stories she gleaned over time from her Brooklyn
neighbors became a major impetus for her book Tales From A
Child Of The Enemy.
Duba's perspective about Germany and its history is that of a
person who knows the many layered historical and psychological
underpinnings from the inside and the outside. At the same time,
she has gained rare insight - for a gentile - into the legacy of the
Holocaust through her decades long friendships and associations
with Holocaust survivors.
A documentary film about Duba's life and work and the issues
they raise, is being developed by veteran film maker, Gail
Freedman, and her company Parrot Productions.
Over the past six years Duba has read and lectured at many
middle- and high schools, colleges and universities, and cultural
and religious institutions throughout the U.S., Israel and Germany
(see lectures). She is a captivating reader and an effective and
forceful public speaker. Moreover, she actively facilitates
provocative dialogue with her audience and does not shirk the
most difficult questions.
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