Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation
Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

Alison Owings
Free-lance journalist and author of
Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich
(Rutgers University Press)

Monday, January 28
5:30 - 7:00 pm
Free

This illustrated talk will focus on what a wide variety of women who lived during the Third Reich -- from righteous Gentiles to Nazi party members, from countesses to Hausfrauen, from farm women to anti-aircraft gunners -- disclosed about their personal experiences in recollections offered decades-later. Their reactions -- both during the Third Reich and later -- raise a number of vexing questions. Why did they behave in such varied ways? How truthful were they when giving oral testimony about their pasts? Do their responses have any relevance to the way in which we react to injustice today?

Alison Owings is the author of FRAUEN: German Women Recall the Third Reich, a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." This poignant collection of interviews was described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "a remarkable work of history that stands out from the vast library of World War II studies for its sheer intimacy and its sometimes startling perspectives. . . ."

Courtesy of The Book Den, copies of FRAUEN will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

at the Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center
524 Chapala St., Santa Barbara
info: 805-957-1115, info@sbjf.org
or
Dr. Leonard Wallock (805) 893-2317
http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/events/endowed/taubman.html

http://www.alisonowings.com/

Reviews:

"Powerful testimony from 29 German women survivors of the Third Reich that provides not only a stunning portrait of life on the home front but also insights into a society that spawned both Hitler and the Holocaust. . . . Oral history at its best . . . a much-needed record of WWII German women."--Kirkus Reviews

"In vivid and often poignant portraits-cum-interviews of 29 women in their 70's and older, she has captured the extraordinary diversity of their experiences. They had in common that they were caught up in a political system and a war designed by men. Unlike many fathers, husbands and brothers, they also survived the war. But in the end, their memories form no single image."--New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable work of history that stands out from the vast library of World War II studies for its sheer intimacy and its sometimes startling perspectives. . . . Frauen transcends the genre of oral history and turns into something more elaborate and accomplished and memorable."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Alison Owings is the author of "Hey, Waitress! The USA From the Other Side of the Tray" and "Frauen / German Women Recall the Third Reich," named a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year". Both are in print and frequently used in university courses.

For the last several years, she has been researching and writing another anti-stereotype oral history-based book, whose working titles include "We're Still Here" and "Listening to Native Americans," a survey of what a wide variety of Native people have to say about contemporary life, and say with passion and humor.

Alison Owings, the daughter of Kenneth Brown Owings and Alice Case Roberts Owings, grew up in East Orange and Chatham, New Jersey and Strafford, Pennsylvania, was graduated from the American University in Washington, DC with a degree in journalism, and attended Freiburg University in Germany. She is fluent in German, but the rrrr still gives her trouble.

She worked for several years as a writer in television news, most memorably for CBS TV in New York.

She lives in California with her first husband.