Moderator: Prof. Lily Zamir
Ms. Ornit Barkai
In Past Forward: A Mother–Daughter Journey of Holocaust Memory, documentary filmmaker Ornit Barkai examines how Holocaust memory is passed down through three generations of women in her family. Through the voices of her mother, herself, and her daughter, Barkai explores how trauma, identity, and storytelling are connected over time. The film highlights a little-known part of the Romanian Holocaust and the lasting echoes of survival and renewal.
> Ornit Barkai is a documentary filmmaker and scholar whose work focuses on gender, identity, and intergenerational memory, exploring how personal and collective histories are transmitted through film and testimony.
Prof. Esther Hertzog
This presentation explores the interpretive challenges faced by an anthropologist documenting her own mother’s Holocaust testimony. Through recorded conversations, it examines the tensions, silences, and contradictions that emerge between professional skepticism and filial empathy. The talk considers how personal and cultural expectations influence both the survivor’s narrative and the researcher’s understanding.
> Esther Hertzog is a social anthropologist and the Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Zefat Academic College. She researches gender, bureaucracy, and Holocaust memory, and has written numerous books on women’s rights, immigration, and state institutions in Israel.
Ms. Shuli Feuer-Schein
Only in the last year of her life did Blanka, Shuli's mother, begin sharing her story of the Second World War, a story she had kept secret for most of her life to protect her only daughter from the burden of her horrifying experiences. When she finally spoke, her courage and heroism became clear. Shuli will share that story, how it affected their relationship, and how it guided her mother’s work for years afterward.
> Shuli Feuer-Schein is an art and culture historian as well as a journalist. Shuli worked for many years as a reporter for the Israel Broadcast Authority and the Maariv daily newspaper, and she now chairs the Journalist Association of Haifa and Northern Israel. In January 2025, Shuli published her book: "The Things Left Unsaid."
This academic evening will blend personal reflections with scholarly insights, exploring the deep relationships between mothers and sons during and after the Holocaust.