Our Podcast Seasons
22 June, 1941, Operation Barbarossa
The date when the German Army, along with its Finnish, Hungarian, Slovak, Italian and Romanian allies all surged across the borders of the Baltic states, eastern Poland and the Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler’s goal: to destroy the Soviet Union.Aside from the horrors about to be inflicted on everyone, it was the Jewish population that would suffer the most.By the time Stalin’s army had regrouped, rearmed and retook their land in 1943 and 1944, every Jew who had not fled--or been spirited away in organized evacuations--would find themselves in ghettos, marched into forests or to the edge of ravines--and murdered.First it was tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands and eventually millions.The Germans and their allies did not act alone. Far too many locals in these lands lent a willing hand-- although in every country, there were a few brave souls who hid a friend, a neighbor, or a complete stranger.In this first season of CENTROPA STORIES, we’re going to hear from three Centropa interviewees—all of whom remember the 22nd of June—when they were just children.
9th November, 1938
Picture this: you’re a child, between the ages of 9 and 14. You’re living in Vienna You’re Jewish.So far, so good.But its March, 1938, when German troops are marching over the Austrian border—unopposed. More than 175,000 Jews are living in Vienna and every one of them is suddenly desperate to get out of the country. Your parents included.Then comes 9 November, 1938: Reichspogromnacht. Scores of synagogues are put to the torch, hundreds of Jewish businesses are ransacked, thousands of Jewish men are beaten on the streets and a great many are shipped off to concentration camps.In Season Two of CENTROPA STORIES, you will meet three of our interviewees whose parents took them to Vienna’s train stations and put them on Kindertransports to England, then went home to wait for the knock on the door they knew would come.You’re also going to meet three people who fled with their entire families—and ended up hiding in Budapest, sent to a prison camp in Kazakhstan, and even to a British army prison—in the Indian Ocean.
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A Ukrainian Jewish Century
13 episodes that will take you on a journey through the 20th century.With stories read by some of Britain’s finest character actors, you will hear excerpts from Sholem Aleichem, as well as personal stories of those who grew up in shtetls, fled from the Germans in 1941, and even fought them at Stalingrad. Then you’ll listen to stories of what it was like to start life over in the postwar decades.
The destruction of a Sephardic Jewish community
A walk through Belgrade’s Jewish quarter, Personal stories, Historical lectures, Readings from Serbian fiction, Sephardic music
Find CENTROPA STORIES on your favourite platform:
The ENGLISH podcasts:
The GERMAN podcasts: