Talk and live Q&A with Bernice Lerner, author of ‘To Meet in Hell: Bergen-Belsen, the British Officer Who Liberated It, and the Jewish Girl He Saved'

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Time: 6.00pm - 7.00pm
Price: free
Speaker(s): Bernice Lerner

All are welcome to attend this not-to-be-missed online event, in which Dr Radu Cinpoes, Associate Professor in Politics, Human Rights and International Relations at Kingston University, will welcome Bernice Lerner, author of To Meet in Hell: Bergen-Belsen, the British Officer Who Liberated It, and the Jewish Girl He Saved (Amberley Publishing), to talk about the background to the book, the people who were interviewed and the value of this new addition to the history book shelves. This moving war story, to be released in paperback in April 2022, is written by a respected US academic and documents the actions of a dedicated British officer who discovered Bergen-Belsen and went on to save thousands of its prisoners.

 At the end of the talk, there will be an opportunity for questions (submitted either before the event or live). Questions can be submitted in advance upon booking.

 About the book

 On April 15, 1945, Brigadier H. L. Glyn Hughes entered Bergen-Belsen for the first time. Waiting for him were 10,000 unburied corpses and 60,000 living prisoners, starving and sick. One month earlier, 15-year-old Rachel Genuth arrived at Bergen-Belsen; deported with her family from Sighet, Hungary, in May of 1944, Rachel had by then already endured Auschwitz, the Christianstadt labor camp, and a forced march through the Sudetenland. In To Meet in Hell, Bernice Lerner follows both Hughes and Genuth as they move across Europe toward Bergen-Belsen in the final, brutal year of World War II.

 Drawing on a wealth of sources, including Hughes's papers, war diaries, oral histories, and interviews, this gripping volume combines scholarly research with narrative storytelling in describing the suffering of Nazi victims, the overwhelming presence of death at Bergen-Belsen, and characters who exemplify the human capacity for fortitude. Lerner, Rachel's daughter, has special insight into the torment her mother suffered. The first book to pair the story of a Holocaust victim with that of a liberator, To Meet in Hell compels readers to consider the full, complex humanity of both.

About the author

Bernice Lerner is the former Dean of Adult Learning at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts and was a senior scholar at the Center for Character and Social Responsibility at Boston University's School of Education, where she taught courses related to the Holocaust, character and ethics education.

Lerner is the author of The Triumph of Wounded Souls: Seven Holocaust Survivors' Lives (endorsed by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Coles; published by University of Notre Dame Press, 2004, and, in German, by Wochenschau Verlag, 2013).

At the time of the 70th anniversary of the liberation she published Bergen-Belsen Through the Eyes of its Liberator (National Review Online, 2015) and The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen (The Jewish Advocate, 2015) subsequently appearing in media outlets throughout the United States.

She has also been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and elsewhere. Lerner holds a doctorate in education from Boston University and a master's from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is a founding member of the Boston Biographers Group.

For further information about this event:

Contact: Lucy Raymond - Faculty Events Officer
Tel: 07446995328
Email: lucy.raymond@kingston.ac.uk