September 7 | 2 – 4pm
Join us for a screening of Germans and Jews followed by a panel discussion. This thoughtful documentary is a subtle and affecting examination of the history of Germany’s postwar Jewish population and of the fraught and fragile relations between Jews and non-Jews. Structured around a dinner party attended by Germans and Jews—some of whom were born in Germany, some who are “Germans by choice”—the film negotiates sensitive questions of memory, guilt, identity and redemption with grace and aplomb.
This program is presented as part of Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion between Blake Peters, Honorary Consul in Oregon for the Federal Republic of Germany, and David Fuks, member of the OJMCHE Speakers’ Bureau and Holocaust educator. The panel will be moderated by Katja Garloff, Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of German Studies, Jewish Studies, and Humanities at Reed College. The documentary is 76 minutes long.
About the Panelists
- David Fuks has been an active member of Portland’s Jewish community for more than forty years. He has served on the Board of the Jewish Federation, worked as Chief Executive Officer of Cedar Sinai Park, and has volunteered for a variety of other organizations, including on OJMCHE’s Speakers’ Bureau. He is the son of two Holocaust survivors: his father, Henry, was in the Lodz ghetto and then spent five years imprisoned in Buchenwald; his mother, Rachel, was taken from her home in Poland and was enslaved in Oberalstad, a labor camp near Prague. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the local Jewish Federation, David’s family resettled in Detroit, Michigan. He moved to Oregon in 1974 after completing his education at the University of Michigan. David is an author, an actor, a Holocaust educator, a playwright, and also worked in the human services arena for over forty years.
- Blake Peters is the Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, where he helps to promote German-US relations in Oregon. As Consul, he supports US and German citizens with legal and consular issues related to Germany, including supporting Jewish Oregonians with German passport applications. He was previously the Head of School at the German International School in Beaverton, Oregon. He holds degrees in German, Education, and Human Development and Social Relations from Kalamazoo College, and earned a M.A. in German Languages and Literatures from Ohio State University.
- Katja Garloff joined Reed College as faculty in 1997 after receiving an M.A. from the University of Hamburg and a Ph.D. in German Literature from the University of Chicago. She is the author of Words from Abroad: Trauma and Displacement in Postwar German Jewish Writers (Wayne State University Press, 2005), Mixed Feelings: Tropes of Love in German Jewish Culture (Cornell University Press, 2016), and Making German Jewish Literature Anew: Authorship, Memory, and Place (Indiana University Press, 2022), as well as the co-editor of German Jewish Literature after 1990 (Camden House, 2018). In recent years, she has won grants from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She serves on the editorial boards of Humanities, of Nexus: Essays in German Jewish Studies, and of The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook. At Reed, she offers courses on modern German literature, German Jewish culture, film and media studies, and humanities.