–Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. Who closes the door? And who can open it? Who escapes? And who doesn’t? A compelling book entitled The Great Departure: Mass Migration From Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World by Tara Zahra answers some of these questions. Tara Zahra is a professor of modern European […]

–Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. History, trauma, and the museum space. Museums can offer many faces to the world. From dusty collections of artefacts to dramatic arenas outlining—or avoiding—compelling national or cultural narratives. A recent lecture sponsored by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv looked at the role museums […]

    –Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. Perhaps some listeners fall into the same serendipitous mood I do when reading a book, or any collection of texts. Perhaps you start from the end. Or the middle. After all, every story has a beginning, middle, and end. But it doesn’t have to be told in […]

    Poetry in a time of war. Such is the headline by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, or FAZ, in its recent reporting on the dynamic annual poetry festival Meridian Czernowitz, held earlier in September in the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi. Why war? Because the newspaper picked up the subtle influences of […]

– Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. Guilt, justice, and family ties. These dramatic themes are recalled today due to the recent publication of the Ukrainian-language edition of East-West Street by Phillip Sands, a book presented by the author at this year’s Lviv Book Forum. The Ukrainian publication of the critically acclaimed book by Sands […]

Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. How do you tell a story? Museums are essential places where stories about nations and cultures are told. But they are also places where the story may not fully told. Or the story may need to be retold. There has been a global boom in new museums. There are […]

  New initiative will help Ukraine preserve its Jewish cemeteries and heritage for future generations “As if they are trees falling in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night.” This haunting remark was made by Phil Carmel, the CEO of the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative. The Initiative was launched to physically […]

-Written and narrated by Peter Bejger. “I saw that that the windows of these ruined houses were stuffed with rags or boarded up. In these unheated kennels were human beings, whole families, starving, usually sick because all kinds of epidemics were raging….” One hundred years a bitter war was raging throughout Europe. One of the […]