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Germanija. How I Became an Adult and a Jew in Germany

Reading and Discussion with Dmitrij Belkin (audio recording available, in German)

December 1993, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Aged 22, Dmitrij Belkin gets into a bus with three bags and six books and embarks upon a journey into the unknown, to Germany – like a quarter of a million other Jews from the ex-USSR.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)

As an immigrant, he enters a country that is undergoing radical changes – his post-Soviet outlook meets the old and new Federal Republic, where Jewish self-discovery becomes possible for him and his family. Germanija is a German chronicle wrapped in a deeply personal narrative that also throws light on immigration today.

Alina Gromova, Jewish Museum Berlin, will lead the ensuing discussion with the author.

The event is part of the New German Stories series.

Portrait photo of Dmitrij Belkin.

Audio recording of Germanija. How I Became an Adult and a Jew in Germany – Reading and Discussion with Dmitrij Belkin (in German); 19 October 2017.
Jewish Museum Berlin 2017
Photo: Dmitrij Belkin; Gerhard Pauly

Interview Series: New German Stories (12)

  • New German Stories

    From 2014 to 2017, our colleagues from the Academy program on migration and diversity held regular events at the Jewish Museum in a series called New German Stories. The guests' lives speak to Germany, past and present, as a society of migration, and the events take these life stories as a springboard for exploring these themes. Beforehand, the guests were almost always interviewed. We have compiled these interviews for you here.

  • Karamba Diaby is sitting on a staircase, wearing a blue suit with a red check tie.

    Karamba Diaby

    “We should close this representation gap”

    Interview
    26 May 2017

  • Portrait of an elderly lady with a bun

    Anita Awosusi

    On her book Our Father – A Sinti Family Recounts

    Interview
    6 Feb 2017

  • Black and white portrait of a young man with glasses in half profile

    Ármin Langer

    “The boredom of peaceful coexistence”

    Interview
    18 Oct 2016

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera.

    Marion Kraft

    “The part Black soldiers played in the liberation of Germany from Nazism has been largely neglected”

    Livestream
    6 Jul 2016

  • Portrait of a young woman smiling

    Çiçek Bacık

    “We’ve always been spoken and written about”

    Interview
    13 Oct 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with a blue headscarf, lipstick and eye shadow, looking upwards to the left.

    Fereshta Ludin

    “I wish more people would look in my eyes instead of at my scarf”

    Interview
    16 Sep 2015

  • Black and white portrait of a man.

    David Ranan

    “Other but not foreign”

    Interview
    6 Jul 2015

  • Detail from a book cover: it shows a fish wrapped in newspaper, with its head and tail fin visible.

    Ahmad Milad Karimi

    On his book Osama bin Laden is Sleeping with Fishes

    Interview
    9 Mar 2015

  • Portrait of a woman with glasses who smiles and looks directly into the camera

    Alina Gromova

    Generation “kosher light”. Young Jews of Russian descent in Berlin

    Interview
    8 Sep 2014

  • An older woman with glasses and headscarf (left in the picture) is talking to a younger woman who also wears glasses and is standing at the right edge of the picture.

    Canan Turan

    Kıymet or: A cinematic tribute to my grandmother

    Interview
    4 Jul 2014

  • On the cover you can see a photo of three playing children

    Urmila Goel and Nisa Punnamparambil-Wolf

    InderKinder
    Dealing creatively with ethnic classifications

    Interview
    19 Mar 2014

  • Three women in profile at a table, smilingly signing books

    Alice Bota, Khuê Pham, and Özlem Topçu

    “New German stories”

    Interview
    29 Jan 2014

Where, when, what?

  • When19 Oct 2017
  • Where W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
    Klaus Mangold Auditorium
    Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
    (Opposite the Museum)
    See location on map

Event Series: New German Stories (4)

Audio Recordings: Listen to Past Museum Events (68)

Academy Programs: Past Events for You to Listen To and Watch 2011–2019 (40)

Links to topics that may be of interest to you

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