“Who is a Jew?  A matter of life or death in Nazi Germany, the definition dug back into a family’s past with dire consequences.  People with a mixed heritage, however remote in their genealogy, were “Mischlinge,” and many suffered the same fates as the fully Jewish citizens of Germany and its conquered nations.

Who am I?  Carolyn Enger, the descendant of a Mischlinge survivor family, found herself lost in an identity maze: Christian? Jewish? In a no-man’s land between?

Her program is a performance event using videos of her family and moments from German Jewish history, music and poetry from German Jews and converts, and a discussion of the journey to her own identity.  Ms. Enger accompanies the video with feelingly played selections by Mendelssohn, Mahler and Schoenberg and others.

In a presentation at our school was an especially moving experience for Holocaust survivors and their descendants in the audience, with whom she engaged in a lively and personal dialog.”

—Nahum Bachrach, Institute of New Dimensions