Salomea's Salon:
A German-Jewish Life in Song and Story

As a prologue to the conference, we are pleased to present a one-woman performance featuring Salomea Genin, social activist, former communist, and a conference participant representing the Jewish community of Berlin. A renewal and adaptation of "Salomea's Salon," as she called it in former years, Salomea has described the performance in a recent letter to us:

Once a month I would invite friends and acquaintances to my East Berlin living room back in 1987-89, during the last throes of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). These meetings became known as "Salomea's Salon." Apart from drinking tea, my visitors held heated debates, read their latest manuscripts (unpublishable in the G.D.R.), offered and received help when needed. The constant theme was: "Whither the G.D.R.?"

Now I have re-opened my salon, singing the songs that were important to me, telling stories drawn from my childhood in Nazi Berlin, my adolescence and youth in Australia, and my experiences during twenty-five years of living in East Germany - my loss of youthful ideals, the ensuing disillusionment, and the need to build another life long before the Berlin wall came down.

Salomea's personal story will prepare us for her report the following day on Jewish life in Berlin today- the challenges and ironies of living in the city which served as government and military headquarters for the Third Reich; headquarters as well for the dreaded Gestapo, the most feared and fearful site in all of Germany; the city which after the war would be divided into East and West, a dramatic icon of the Cold War itself.