THE SHINING STAR

Helene Maimann and Doron Rabinovici

THE SHINING STAR
We children of the survivors

Our parents had led extreme lives: as fighters in Spain, in the Resistance, in the armies of the Allies, as survivors in the underground or in a concentration camp, in exile in Moscow or in a camp in Siberia. Others were on Schindler's list. They were Jewish or communist or both. After the Second World War, the world would be a different place, that was certain for them. Their children went from the margins of society to its centre. Today, many of them belong to the cultural and political avant-garde. The historian Helene Maimann is one of them. She talks about how she was moulded, but also about the confrontations with her parents' world, about hopes and failures and about her friends Elizabeth T. Spira, Robert Schindel, André Glucksmann, Edek Bartz, Arik Brauer and others.

Helene Maimann, born in Vienna, is a historian, author and filmmaker. She has curated several major exhibitions on Austrian contemporary history and has been honoured with the Karl Renner Journalism Prize (2011), the Käthe Leichter State Prize for Women's Studies (2017) and the Axel Corti Prize (2019), among others.

Doron Rabinovici, born in Tel Aviv and raised in Vienna, is a writer and historian. His work includes short stories, novels and academic articles. His most recent novel „Die Einstellung“ was published by Suhrkamp in 2022. He has been awarded the Anton Wildgans Prize and the Austrian Book Trade Honour Prize for Tolerance in Thought and Action for his work.

In co-operation with the Zsolnay Publishing House

Helene Maimann:
The shining star. We children of the survivors
Zsolnay Verlag, August 2023, ISBN 978-3-552-07279-4, € 28,-