By remembering his family lost in the Holocaust, Mike Joseph encounters the Palestinian Nakba. How do radically different histories connect?

Documentary series KEYS: A Troubled Inheritance launches in Wednesday 6th September 2023

An epic journey to uncover a Holocaust inheritance leads relentlessly to discovering a Nakba inheritance: two catastrophes that are very different, but very
connected. Can they both be heard and understood? With personal testimony, letters and memories by those who survived and those who did not, this challenging audio series is dramatised and narrated by broadcaster Mike Joseph.

NAMES

When the place names in Keys get confusing, these notes will help.

Mike’s grandparents came from Galicia, a part of eastern Europe on no modern map. Today some of Galicia is southeast Poland, another part is western Ukraine. Galicia no longer exists.In the last century, many of Galicia’s Jews, Ukrainians and Poles also ceased to exist, violently, as their province was repeatedly ruptured by the front lines of two World Wars, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Before 1918, Galicia was the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s most eastern province. Its capital was Lemberg (German) = Lwów (Polish) = Lviv (Ukrainian).

Three names, but one city.Further south, Mike’s grandfather grew up in Stanislau (German); left Stanislaviv (Ukrainian) in 1918 for a better life in Germany; deported back to Stanisławów (Polish) in 1938, which became Stanislaviv (Ukrainian) in 1939; killed in Stanislau (German) in 1941.Before Mike first visited that city in 1999, the Soviet Union renamed it Ivano-Frankovsk (Russian). Today the place where he found his grandfather’s surviving colleagues and allies is called Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukrainian).

 Five names, but one city.Fatima Abu Salem grew up in the large Palestinian village of Burayr, at crossroads leading to Gaza, Hebron and Beersheba. Today a few ruins of Burayr are surrounded by the fields of kibbutz Bro’r Hayyil.

Two names, but one place.Place names matter. How we name places reveals our own histories, identities and yearnings.

Testimony

Testimony and commentary by Mike Joseph, Lilli Gold, Henryk Luft, Itamar Shapira, Amnon Neumann, Sami Abu Salem, Fatima Abu Salem, Asha Phillips.

PRODUCTION

Mike Joseph             Producer

Jesse Lawrence        Video Editor

Zac Ware                  Sound Editor

Micha Wink               Keys Theme & Variations on a Bach Prelude in B minor

Michelle Alderson       Graphic Designer

Pamela Koehne-Drube  Audience and Web Advisor