Esther Dischereit, “Who was Fritz Kittel? A Reichsbahn Worker Decides 1933-2023”

Sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies and the German unit of the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic +.

In February of this year, Esther Dischereit created an exhibition in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn to honor the railroad worker Fritz Kittel. In 1944 and 1945, he hid her mother Hella and sister Hannelore, who as Jews were persecuted by the Gestapo and threatened with death in Germany under National Socialism. They experienced their liberation by U.S. troops in 1945. The writer began to search for the family of the rescuer and found them in 2019. Fritz Kittel had not told them about his courageous act throughout his life. Esther Dischereit’s literary responses in 17 text pieces relate to other found objects from the lives of the three people, and they offer a dialogue with those who are now the daughters and sons or grandchildren. False information given at a registration office, illegal names and addresses … What do we read when we read these documents? What do we see when we look at these photos?

Esther Dischereit lives in Berlin. She is a prolific writer of prose, poetry, essays as well as plays for theatre and the German Broadcasting Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She published recently: Hab keine Angst! Erzähl alles. Das Attentat von Halle und die Stimmen der Überlebenden (Hg) 2020, (On the Halle Attack against the visitors of the Synagogue in Halle / Don t be afraid/ Tell everything / The Voices of the Survivors) (ed.) Sometimes a Single Leaf, 2020,(Engl.(German); Flowers for Otello On the Crimes that Came out of Jena, 2022 (both translated by Iain Galbraith); Wer war Fritz Kittel, Who was Fritz Kittel, Exhibition, 2023 Berlin Deutsches Technikmuseum/ Chemnitz (Jüdische Kulturtage) / Frankfurt am Main (Jüdisches Museum) / Deutsche Bahn Museum Nürnberg (Dtld.) So? Oder Esther Dischereit ist eine der profiliertesten Stimmen der Second Generation of the Shoa …