Name: The Righteous Man from Fulda
Start: 2024-01-27T17:00:00-06:00
Location: 150 N Michigan Ave.

The Righteous Man from Fulda

The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany operating worldwide. For over 45 years, our institute in downtown Chicago has been a place for ideas, education and transatlantic discourse.

Goethe-Institut Chicago

A new documentary explores the filmmaker's Holocaust family history, two heirloom tablecloths, and the history of the German town of Fulda.

150 N Michigan Ave.

<h3>In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, join us for the Chicago premiere of The Righteous Man from Fulda, with opening remarks by Michael Ahrens, Consul General of Germany in Chicago.</h3> This compelling new documentary by Ethan Bensinger traces the filmmaker's own family Holocaust history through the unlikely story of the two tablecloths that belonged to Hugo Sichel, the filmmaker's great uncle, who lived in Fulda until his deportation in December 1941. Sichel gifted the tablecloths to his friend and non-Jewish neighbor Paul Römhild, who had put himself and his family at risk to secretly supply Sichel with food. Eight decades later, after a chance encounter, Bensinger travels to the Hessian hometown of his great uncle to receive the tablecloths from Paul Römhild's daughter, who had kept them safe throughout the years, and to reunite their two families. This documentary interweaves one family's story with the broader events surrounding Kristallnacht in Fulda in November 1938, offering insights into the town's Jewish history and highlighting how the memory of the Holocaust continues to impact the present. After the screening, Ethan Bensinger will be joined in conversation by Elizabeth Loentz, Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Advanced registration is required, and please bring a photo ID for check-in. Please note that this event will take place in the Randolph Room, on the 3rd Floor of 150 N. Michigan Ave., in the same building as the Goethe-Institut Chicago. Light refreshments will be served.If you can't make this event, don't miss our second screening at 6pm on Tuesday, January 30th at the DANK Haus!This program is presented by the Goethe-Institut Chicago and DANK Haus German American Cultural Center. <h3>Participant Bios</h3> Ethan BensingerShaped by the trauma of his family’s experience of being uprooted from Germany in the years preceding the Holocaust, Ethan Bensinger created his first film in 2012, Refuge: Stories of the Selfhelp Home. Ethan’s Fulda-born mother and Frankfurt-born father found it necessary to leave Germany in the mid-1930s. His family's experience as refugees, first in Palestine/Israel and then as new immigrants to the United States, led Ethan to become an immigration lawyer. For over 25 years, Ethan served as the Managing Director of the Chicago office of a global immigration law firm. When he retired from law, Ethan became a filmmaker to give a voice to the last eyewitnesses to life as it was before, during and after the Holocaust. Ethan continues to share the history of his family as a speaker for the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center and with students in Germany. Elizabeth LoentzElizabeth Loentz is Associate Professor of Germanic Studies and Associate Director of the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include: German-Jewish writing, German and Jewish women’s movements, Yiddish in Germany, contemporary transnational writing, and middle-brow literature. She is the author of Let Me Continue to Speak the Truth: Bertha Pappenheim as Author and Activist (Hebrew Union College Press) and is currently completing a monograph with the working title: “Mame-loshn in the Fatherland: The Meaning of Yiddish in Germany from the First World War through the Postwar Occupation.” Prior to her doctoral studies, she taught German at the Haus Chevalier Clearing-House for unaccompanied, minor-aged refugees in Hallbergmoos, Germany.

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The Righteous Man from Fulda

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