Holocaust author to visit

Growing up amid the evidence of recent war in 1950s Germany, Ursula Hegi lived in a world of uneasy silence. When she tried to ask questions about the war that had transpired, adults gave only vague and reluctant answers, and said nothing about the Holocaust.

Hegi, who will lecture at UW–Madison April 2 at the State Historical Society, immigrated to the United States in 1964. Now an award-winning novelist and professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, she recently has returned to this troubling topic in her book, Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America (1997).

The book describes how Americans born in Germany during or shortly after the war found out about the Holocaust, and how they have — or haven’t — come to grips with it. .

“In some sense, immigrants always live between two worlds,” says Joe Salmons, director of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, the principal sponsor of Hegi’s visit. “Tearing the Silence documents how German-born Americans define themselves in relation to this German legacy, but in a broader and distinctly American context.”

In addition to Tearing the Silence, Hegi also has written a number of novels, including Stones from the River (1994), another response to the silence from her childhood. Last fall, Kaukauna high school teacher Kari Nelson assigned Stones in her class, Justice, Law and Mercy.

“I felt the book would make the students think in a way they’ve never thought before,” Nelson says. “It challenged them to see how a singular event becomes injustice.”

Nelson plans on bringing 15-20 of those students to Madison for Hegi’s lecture.

“To see her in person will be the frosting on the cake,” Nelson says. She says she hopes the lecture will inspire the students to keep tackling difficult thematic literature and taking contemporary fiction seriously throughout their lives.

Free tickets to Ursula Hegi’s lecture are available through the Max Kade Institute, (608) 262-7546. The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the State Historical Society auditorium, 816 State St. The UW–Madison Creative Writing Program; the departments of German, Comparative Literature and History; and the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation will co- sponsor the visit and lecture. The University Lecture Committee and the Anonymous and Humanistic funds are providing additional funding.