The Team

Dr Bea Lewkowicz is a social anthropologist and oral historian and is the Director of the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive. She is a member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her research interests include oral history; trauma and memory; diasporas and displacement; and nationalism and ethnicity. She has worked on many oral history projects and has directed and produced a wide range of testimony-based films. She has also curated several exhibitions, such as ‘Continental Britons’, ‘Double Exposure’, ‘Sephardi Voices’, and most recently ‘Still in Our Hands: Kinder Life Portraits’.

Her publications include:

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• Reflections on the Role of Gender in Women's Oral History Narratives’. In: Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. Editors: Andrea Hammel, Charmian Brinson, and Jana Barbora Buresova (2017).
   

• ‘The AJR Refugee Voices Archive: A Recourse for Scholarship and Learning’. In: Preserving Survivors Memories: Digital Testimony Collections about Nazi Persecution: History, Education, Media. Editors: Apostolopoulos, N., Barricelli. M., and Koch, G. (2016).
   

• ‘Refugee Voices (The AJR Audio-Visual Testimony Archive): A New Resource for the Study of the Kindertransport’. In: The Kindertransport to Britain 1938/39. Editors: Andrea Hammel and Bea Lewkowicz (2012).
   

• The Jewish Community of Salonika: History, Memory, Identity (London, 2006).
        

• After the War We Were All Together: Jewish Memories of Post-War Thessaloniki’. In: After the War Was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960 edited by M. Mazower (2000).  

Jana is a committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, at the University of London, and is carrying out post-doctoral research. In 2019 she was awarded the Honorary Silver Medal of Jan Masaryk by the government of the Czech Republic for her book 'The Dynamics of Forced Female Migration from Czechoslovakia to Britain, 1938-1950'. The award is given for outstanding contributions to the development of relations between the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

Her key areas of interest are political exile past and present, particularly Czechoslovak women in exile, on which she has spoken and contributed to a number of publications. She is currently co-authoring a book about the Czech Refugee Trust Fund in Britain.

Dr Rosalyn Livshin is an oral historian and research consultant, specialising in life stories, biographies, and genealogy. She is an oral history trainer for the British Library and Oral History Society, training groups in the North-West in the practice of oral history. She has worked on many oral history projects, as interviewer and project co-ordinator, interviewing hundreds of refugees and survivors and the children of immigrant Jews, who came to Manchester. She has worked on projects for Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester University, Manchester Jewish Museum, the British Library, 45 Aid Society, the Windermere Holocaust Project, Shoah Foundation and AJR as well as private commissions.

Her publications include: 

• The Acculturation of the Children of Immigrant Jews in Manchester, 1890-1930’ in The Making of Anglo-Jewry, edited by David Cesarani, (1990)

• The History of the Harrogate Jewish Community, (1995)

• Dr Bernard Sandler: A Biography, (private publication, 1997)

• Olga Sandler (private publication, 2003)

She provided the extensive interview information for the novel Sori’s Story: An Amazing Life of Survival and Faith, Devora Gliksman and Sori Kraus, (2014) and for Moishe’s Story: Satmar-Glasgow-Manchester, Martin Younger, (2019).

Helen worked for BBC Radio - including 12 years as a reporter for ‘Woman’s Hour’ - and was also a Senior Lecturer in Radio. In 2000, she won the Commission for Racial Equality’s Race in the Media Award for a BBC oral history series, ‘The Century Speaks’. She then set up her own oral history consultancy and created a variety of archives including an oral history of diabetes, which won Oxford University’s ‘IT in Teaching and Learning Award’ and was chosen as a Wellcome Trust Research Highlight. 200 of her life-story recordings are in the British Library and 150 in the Library of Birmingham. For around 10 years she was a West Midlands regional representative for the Oral History Society and a Trustee of the Charles Parker Archive. She retired in 2020 but continues to give talks on oral history.

Susanna Kleeman studied history and has worked in digital technology since 1996. Projects include: interactive TV games for Cable & Wireless and Virgin Media, strategy and product development for NTL and the BBC. She wrote the initial business case for the BBC's iPlayer service and helped develop the BBC's digital archive strategy. She now combines content strategy and branding with hands-on site building and design for a variety of clients. 

@goodworkdigital

Kristin was born, raised and educated in Germany, and has lived and worked in London since 2007. By profession, Kristin is a lawyer, with experience in management consulting, compliance and translation. During her secondary and university studies, she focused intensively on Germany’s 20th-century history, in particular the Holocaust and the history, literature and wider culture surrounding it. Kristin’s involvement with AJR Refugee Voices affords her the opportunity to apply this knowledge in reviewing and editing the interview transcripts prior to publication. Every interview is an irreplaceable and unique testimony, and Kristin’s aim is to ensure that the transcript reflects most accurately the substance and detail of the interviewee’s story. Kristin also manages the project database.

Frank has worked as a freelance Cameraman and Director/Cameraman for 25 years. He has worked across all disciplines but the majority of his work has been in factual, educational and corporate film making.  He lives in North London with his partner and two sons.

Simon has been a videographer and editor for many years, working on a wide variety of projects, including documentaries.

I grew up mainly in Finland, former Yugoslavia and Holland. Each country made a lasting impression on me in terms of its history and language. My father informed me about the Holocaust at the age of ten. Although I’m trained in art, design and cultural history, it has been my privilege to do this work. For me, it’s not just a job; it’s a labour of accuracy and care. People ask me, “Isn’t it depressing, listening to these stories?” I don’t deny that many have made me deeply sad, but each story is unique, and for the  most part I’m greatly moved and inspired by how each person has survived. 

Ann Rau Dawes had a varied career until being employed by the probation service from until 1998. Ann attended Kingston University where she gained a MA in the History of Art; Her thesis was entitled “Milein Cosman: A Critique of the Biography and Representation of the Jewish Émigré Artist between 1939-1959”. Ann has a chapter published in the Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930-1945, ed: Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider & Jas Elsner, Published by Oxford University Press, 2017. (Chapter 16: Milein Cosman at The Slade).

Ann has been involved with Refugee Voices since its inception. 

Dr Anthony Grenville, son of Jewish refugees from Vienna who fled to London in 1938, was born in 1944. He lectured in German at the Universities of Reading, Bristol and Westminster from 1971-1996. He has worked for many years with the Association of Jewish Refugees and was Consultant Editor of its monthly journal from 2006-2017. With Dr Bea Lewkowicz, he was responsible for creating the exhibition ‘Continental Britons’ (2002) and the first part of the AJR’s ‘Refugee Voices’ collection of filmed interviews (2003-2008). He has been Chair of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London, since 2013.

He has published very widely on the history and experience of the refugees from Hitler in Britain, including Jewish Refugees from Germany and Austria in Britain, 1933-1970: Their Image in ‘AJR Information’ (2010) and Encounters with Albion: Britain and the British in Texts by Jewish Refugees from Nazism (2018).