The Lost Names of Lithuania Seminar

Michael Kretzmer and Danielle Lockwood’s grandfathers were brothers. They came from a small, pretty town in Lithuania called Birzai where Jews had lived peacefully for 600 years, but on August 8, 1941, the entire community - 2,400 men, women and children were marched to a forest 3 kms from the town centre by 80 Lithuanians, many of them their neighbours, and hacked, beaten and shot to death. Nobody survived. 

In this talk Michael  and Danielle will discuss their film The Lost Names of LIthuania and explain how a simple video, which was meant to serve purely as a family memento of a visit to Lithuania to unveil a Holocaust memorial at the mass grave just outside Birzai, has turned into a much wider and urgent campaign for historical truth about the Holocaust. 

Speaker Information

Michael Kretzmer began his career as a travel writer for the Sunday Times, also writing for the Guardian and the Literary Review. He moved from  print journalism to television  to become a senior series producer, writer and director for ITV, and a documentary producer for  the BBC and Channel 4. Following his  television career he built an award winning media production company which he sold in 2010.

Danielle Lockwood was the Head of Publicity for Warner Bros. Film Distributors in the UK. Relocating to the South Coast she took her MA in Jewish History and Culture at the Parkes Institute. Danielle is a Programming Consultant and Jury co-ordinator for the UK Jewish Film Festival.

This event will be chaired by James Jordan.

Registration

Please note this is a free event but please register by clicking on the link above, we will send you joining instructions prior to the event. Registration closes at 13.30 (UTC) on 3 May 2021.