Karen Kruger, an American visitor to Cape Town, is using her family’s history to inspire meaningful learning among teenagers worldwide.
Her extraordinary story is captured in Letters from Brno, a documentary she co-created with filmmaker Jeffrey Gary, who is also working on a film about the Auschwitz Album.
During a recent visit to South Africa, the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre (CTHGC) hosted a public screening of the film, which moved many audience members to tears. Karen, an educator by profession, also led a workshop for learners from a local high school as part of the Centre’s educational programme. Her teaching highlighted the extraordinary impact of personal testimony and primary sources, including original photographs and wartime letters.
Letters from Brno traces Karen’s own journey to uncover her identity. Raised in a Christian home in the United States, she was one of four children and grew up knowing only that her mother had emigrated from Czechoslovakia. Her mother spoke little about her past,
giving no indication of her Jewish heritage.
Everything changed when Karen discovered a bundle of letters written by her grandparents in Brno to relatives who had escaped Europe before the Nazi occupation. Over years of research and by painstakingly translating the letters from German and Czech, she pieced together a remarkable truth: her mother, Erika, and her aunt, Daisy, were among the 669 Jewish children rescued by Nicholas Winton through the Kindertransport.
The letters, written between 1938 and 1941, give voice to the heartbreaking uncertainty of parents separated from their children, unsure of their safety or well-being. Although Karen never met her grandparents – they were murdered after being deported to the Terezin Ghetto – their words allowed her to build a powerful personal connection across generations.
Her story resonated deeply with the teenagers she taught in Cape Town. “Many of our learners report how valuable personal stories are in immersing them in this history, and creating empathy towards others,” observed Orli Barnett, Education Director at the Centre.
Letters from Brno is a compelling and important film. While it is not yet available internationally, Karen is actively seeking a distributor so audiences beyond the United States can share in this moving family journey and its lessons for today’s world.
See more at http://www.lettersfrombrno.com
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