Lecture: Lolita Tomsone (director, Žanis Lipke Memorial): Žanis Lipke and his help for persecuted Jews Followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Karoline Georg (head of the Silent Heroes Memorial Center), Dr. Raivis Sīmansons (project manager, Žanis Lipke Memorial), and Lolita Tomsone

We would be very pleased to welcome you to the event. For further information, please see the attached invitation.

The event will take place in English.

Please register by September 23, 2025 by email: veranstaltung@gdw-berlin.de.

By taking part in the event, you agree that film and photographic material produced there may be used for the publicity purposes (including internet sites, social media, print products).

In January 1942, the six-year-old Jewish girl Hanna Stern, her mother Sophie, and her brother Philip were deported from Berlin to the ghetto in Riga (Latvia). Philip Stern died, presumably in November 1943. After the ghetto was closed down, mother and daughter were taken to Kaiserwald concentration
camp outside Riga, where they had to perform forced labor in an external work detail. With the aid of the harbor worker Žanis Lipke, they managed to escape. During the German occupation of Latvia, Lipke worked in the German Luftwaffe’s depot. Along with around 25 others, he helped Jews escape the ghetto and labor camps and hid them in Riga and the surrounding area. After Hanna and Sophie Stern’s escape, Lipke found a hiding place for them in the home of one of his network’s helpers. In cooperation with the Žanis Lipke Memorial in Riga, under the management of Lolita Tomsone, and in conjunction with the curator Dr.Raivis Sīmansons, the creative technologist Cory McLeod has developed a Virtual Reality (VR) documentary entitled Hanna’s Story. The story is based on a letter written by Sophie Stern to German authorities after the war and is narrated in the VR film by Hanna’s daughter, Ilana Avimor. As a cooperation partner with the Žanis Lipke Museum, the Silent Heroes Memorial Center has been using the VR application as part of its historical -political education work.
The event will take place in English.