DECEMBER SERIES: EASTERN EUROPEAN HERITAGE
Presented by Dean Cycon
Author, Lawyer, Human Rights Advocate
Join author, attorney, and social entrepreneur Dean Cycon in discussing his debut novel, Finding Home (Hungary, 1945), the first to deeply explore the complex emotional, moral, and economic dynamics of Jewish survivors trying to return to their homes after liberation.
How do you return home when home no longer exists? For nine months in Auschwitz, eighteen-year-old Eva Fleiss clung to sanity by playing piano on imaginary keyboards. After liberation, Eva and the five remaining Jews of Laszlo, Hungary, journey home, seeking to restart their lives.
Yet the town that deported them was not ready to embrace their return. Their former neighbors and friends resisted relinquishing their newfound status and property, and they struggled with their roles as perpetrators, enablers, and bystanders during the Holocaust.
Based on years of interviews with survivors and townspeople in Hungary, Poland, and the US, the novel examines themes of alienation, dealing with trauma, bystanding, denial, and intergenerational transmission of antisemitism that is unfortunately, so relevant today.
Register to receive the Zoom link to join us online. Barring technical issues, this talk will be posted on our Program Recording Archives.
Dean Cycon is an author, lawyer, human rights advocate, and internationally renowned social entrepreneur who has lived and worked in over sixty countries. Cycon is a passionate explorer of culture and history, seeking out unexamined corners illuminating the human condition. Finding Home (Hungary, 1945) won the Independent Press Award for Judaica, Finalist for the Goethe Prize for Late Fiction, and was nominated for the ALA Sophie Broder Prize for Jewish Literature
We extend a special thank you to Andrew R. Ammerman for sponsoring our Fall 2024 program lineup. He dedicates the semester’s learning in loving memory of Josephine and H. Max Ammerman and Stephen C.