Wells Maltings Tust – Talk – HMD 2026
Activity information
Activity type: Public activity
Organisation name: Wells Maltings Tust
Address:
Wells Maltings
Staithe Street
Wells-next-the-Sea
Norfolk
NR23 1AN
United Kingdom
THEY LEFT NO FOOTPRINTS - a talk by Diana Cook: Wells Maltings
Margot Pogorzelski, was born in a small town in Lower Silesia, Germany. which now belongs to Poland. Margot fled to England in 1939, a few weeks before war broke out. Her two eldest brothers escaped to British controlled Palestine, later to become Israel. Their mother and two younger brothers were ‘deported to the East in 1942’, which means they were sent to a death camp and murdered.
Margot’s story is presented by her daughter Diana using family photos and voiced extracts from a brief memoir Margot wrote describing her childhood and early adult life. She describes how Margot’s idyllic childhood changed dramatically after Hitler came to power in 1933 when her now widowed mother was left with no income and five children to bring up. She tells the story of how Margot moved to Berlin to study nursing and then escaped to England aged just 19, expecting to be able to send for her mother and her two youngest brothers. After a few months as a student nurse in Leeds she was arrested and interned on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’.
Diana goes on to explore the echoes of the past that resonate today. How events from her family history are being repeated all over the world, causing the mass movement of people, displaced from all that is familiar in their homes, their countries and their continents. By telling her family story – of real people with fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters who lived, loved, existed, and perished – she looks at how collective sympathy for the plight of refugees can turn to fear and prejudice in no time at all.
In association with Generation 2 Generation
Organiser Name
Other organisation(s) involved
Generation 2 Generation