“SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY”

By Claire Bruell

Design & Production by Mike Reganon

"This is your history, these are your stories, my gift to you." These are the last words in Claire Bruell's four-book series to future generations - her "five beautiful grandchildren", Simon, Sofia, Lily, Nate, and Isaac.

But more than a gift to her grandchildren, these books spell out the trauma Jews have faced over millennia and, through her resolute and gently probing of the Bruell and Briess family trees over four generations, she exemplifies the lives of so many. Jews around the world will identify with the tragedies and joys, the uplifting and the horror, the sheer delight and abject gloom.

Carefully moulded over four books, Claire describes these stages and reveals the lives of her ancestors as they grow and achieve success, have wonderful families, meet catastrophe, are split asunder, murdered by Nazis, and finally regather the remnants to rebuild - a story so familiar to Jews who have only sought peaceful coexistence for centuries.

Claire will describe aspects of the process of creating that content from age 32 through to today, and with Mike, will speak about some of the features of working together and the exquisite joy of laying it all out on paper.

Claire Bruell

Claire is a historian particularly interested in 19th-century Europe and the Holocaust. Her interests span history, genealogy, reading, collecting curios and ex libris, and from time to time she speaks and writes on many of these subjects. She has been a Justice of the Peace for 30 years and the coordinator of an oral history project in Auckland for almost as long. Her days are focused on family and community.

Mike Reganon

Mike is a retired teacher, journalist, editor, designer, and publisher. He has dabbled in pottery, sculpture, printing, oil painting, and renovating the family home, a lifetime occupation. Today, he continues his clay creations by joining a local pottery group and has begun learning Yiddish using Duolingo. As those skills improve, he hopes to find others keen to practice the mamaloshen, but right now he’s farshmakht.

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