How do people become refugees? What’s it like? Mike Joseph’s aunt became a refugee on her 10th birthday. This is the story of comfortable family life transformed in an instant, narrated by the family’s only survivors. Yet even refugees are not the most unfortunate. Some are trapped, unable to escape, awaiting their fate.

In this epic journey, Mike sets out to uncover his Holocaust inheritance, but is led relentlessly to discovering his Nakba inheritance. It turns out that the two different catastrophes are more connected than he thought possible. In 2023, can both stories be heard and understood?

With unique personal testimony, recordings, letters and memories by those who survived and those who did not, this challenging audio series is devised, dramatised and narrated by broadcaster Mike Joseph.

PLACE 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 thriving 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.

CREDITS for this episode

Testimony

Testimony and commentary by Mike Joseph, Asha Phillips

Interpreters and Translators

Dina Brandt

Alex Dunai

Markus Hartmann

Burkhardt Kolbmuller

Svitlana Kovalyk

Itamar Shapira

Nadia Slobodyan

Hannah Kleinfeld

Atef Alshaer

Images

Mike Joseph

Sami Abu Salem

Music

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

PRODUCTION

Mike Joseph Producer

Zac Ware Sound Editor

Pamela Koehne-Drube Audience and Web Advisor

PRESENTERS

Mike Joseph

Asha Phillips

SPEAKERS AND CAST in programme order

Lilli Gold interviewed by USC Shoah Foundation, © 1998 USC Shoah Foundation. From the archive of USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education http://sfi.usc.edu/

Peter Kirsten as Leipzig policeman

Rosa Gold interviewed by Mike Joseph

George May as Israel Gold