Daniela Spenser Presents Echoes of Exile: A Family’s Odyssey through the Holocaust and Cold War

In this lecture delivered on September 3, 2025, Daniela Spenser presents her new book, Echoes of Exile which reveals the seismic disruptions of twentieth-century European history through the intimate lens of one family’s struggle to survive. Drawing on research in various archives, including the JDC Archives, Daniela Spenser sets out to record the life of her mother, Ruth, unearthing personal facts and stories that illuminate the shared traumas and experiences of millions of Czech, Polish, and German Jews who died in the Holocaust, as well as the stories of those who survived and lived under Communism and the Cold War.

Daniela Spenser is a British-Czech historian and research fellow at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico City.