Reading at TIETZ: Biographical search for traces in Lodz
A reading with the author Jens-Jürgen Ventzki will take place on Tuesday, 12 November at 7 p.m. in the event hall at Haus TIETZ. The theme of the evening is the author's examination of the biography of his father Werner Ventzki, who was born in Lodz in 1944. From 1941 to 1943, he was the mayor of Lodz ("Litzmannstadt"), a city occupied by the German fascists and thus also responsible for the second largest ghetto in Poland after Warsaw. The book, which is the result of his preoccupation with history and his own family history, is entitled "Seine Schatten, meine Bilder. A Search for Traces" and was published by Studienverlag Innsbruck in 2011. A Polish edition of the book was also published in 2012.
The evening in the TIETZ event hall is being organised by the German-Polish Society Chemnitz in cooperation with the Chemnitz City Library, supported by the Town Twinning Department of the Chemnitz Mayor's Office. Admission to the reading is free.
In his book, Jens-Jürgen Ventzki uses documents, memories, literature and archive studies to describe his father's life as Gauamtsleiter, Reichsredner, Lord Mayor, member of the Waffen-SS and later, after the Second World War, as a civil servant in the service of the Federal Republic of Germany. The son's confrontation with a difficult legacy, with his "two fathers" as he writes, shows a hopeful way of dealing with the burden of history.