Processing Holocaust Trauma Through the Arts: a Roundtable Discussion

Hear how creatives have processed Holocaust trauma and made their

experience of that dark period available to a broad audience through

storytelling in the media of fiction, nonfiction, and music as well as through

planning commemorative events. Discover what each of us can learn about

the past and about ourselves by experiencing the creative gifts that have

resulted from their work.

Participants:

Ed Edelson of Southbury is a former first selectman of the town and an

active member of the community. He is the author of Lois’s Story, which tells

the story of a period in 1937 when the people of Southbury rallied to reject

the Nazis who were trying to build a military training camp in the Kettletown

area. Ed has worked with Region 15 schools to have the story included in the

district’s 4th-grade curriculum, and he has organized remembrances of the

event in town and at Heritage Village.

Deborah S. Holman of Woodbury is an author, genealogist, and blogger

whose book Nothing Really Bad Will Happen, a Holocaust Story of Loss and

Legacy (2024) is the creative artifact of Holman’s research about her

grandfather and great-grandfather, who perished in the Holocaust, and her

mother and grandmother, who fled Vienna to start a new life in the U.S.

Bernard Kaplan of Sherman and Queens, New York, is a retired educator and

school administrator and an active musician. He is also the vice-president

and treasurer of the Jewish Community Center in Sherman. Kaplan wrote the

libretto Remember Warsaw with composer Roger W. Ames. Remember

Warsaw was premiered in 2011 by the Oratorio Society of Minnesota.

Bonnie Siegler is the founder and cre­ative direc­tor of award-win­ning,

mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary graph­ic design stu­dio Eight and a Half. She

coauthored The Amer­i­can Way: A True Sto­ry of Nazi Escape, Super­man,

and Mar­i­lyn Monroe (2023) with Helene Stapinski, which traces her

grandparents’ journey from Nazi Germany to New York. She is also the

author of Dear Client, a guide for peo­ple who work with cre­atives, and

Signs of Resis­tance, a his­to­ry of protest in Amer­i­ca. She taught design in

the grad­u­ate schools of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and the School of Visu­al Arts

for many years.

Helene Stapinski is the author of three memoirs: Five-Finger Discount: A

Crooked Family History, Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music, and

Murder in Matera. Her latest book, The American Way, which she coauthored

with Bonnie Siegler, follows the life of a man who escaped Nazi Berlin with

the help of Superman’s publisher. She has written extensively for The New

York Times, for The Washington Post, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Salon,

Real Simple, New York Magazine among others.