Speakers: Meriel Schindler, Josh Spero

Meriel Schindler spent most of her life dealing with her father Kurt, an often-impossible man who made extravagant claims about their family history. Were they really related to Franz Kafka, Oskar Schindler or Hitler’s Jewish physician Dr Bloch? And what really happened on Kristallnacht, the night that Nazis beat her grandfather half to death? Following Kurt’s passing in 2017 lawyer Meriel pieced together an extraordinary story taking in two centuries, two world wars and a family business: Innsbruck’s famous Café Schindler. She joins us to discuss the resulting book The Lost Café Schindler, which movingly weaves together memoir, family history and an untold story of the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It explores the restorative power of writing, and offers readers a profound reflection on memory, truth, trauma and the importance of cake.