MEDIATED LIVES: The Family Historian with Dena Rueb Romero and Richard Neugass

Richard Neugass and Dena Rueb Romero will discuss two family histories touched by the Holocaust and the roll of family historians in keeping the archive alive. How does media promote memory and what are the potential pitfalls? After her father’s death, Dena Rueb Romero accidentally discovered a box of letters at her parents’ home. The letters dated back to 1938. These letter illuminated for Dena her parents’ lives during the war and filled in gaps of information that had haunted her childhood. Romero uses both family documents and historical research to flesh out her parents’ moving love story, the growing hostilities toward the German Jewish population, her grandparents’ increasing desperation, and her father’s hard work to help his loved ones escape Nazi Germany in her debut book, All for You. Painters tell stories about their subjects through pictures. Richard tells stories about his subjects by recording and preserving a dialogue about their life adventures. Turning his focus inward toward his own family history, Richard excavates the incredible story of his father, Herman Neugass, the ‘Human Bullet’—an American Jewish sprinter who famously chose to boycott the 1936 Olympic trials in protest against Nazi antisemitism.