The Hidden Holocaust Papers: Survival. Exile. Return.

Hannah Marazzi, Executive Director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, introduces an intimate evening of conversation and reflection hosted by Timothy Taylor and recorded live on February 13th, 2025, at the Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. Timothy speaks about the podcast, his family's experiences and the broader meaning of these...

As this stage of Timothy’s journey draws to a close, he’s confronted with some key remaining questions. After the persecution and rejection that has been experienced, can there be any meaningful return to Germany for the Kuppenheims? What role can commemoration and memorialization play? And assuming it’s even possible, what form should his own reconciliation with Germany take? Timothy explores the...

Having traced his grandparents’ and mother’s journeys from Germany to Ecuador, Timothy considers the German-Jewish family history that gave rise to both the Kuppenheims’ success and to their persecution. He begins with the archive’s oldest record, dating from 1813. This document allows him to unpack the groundbreaking career of his great-great-great-grandfather, and also to situate his ancestor in...

Ursula’s situation grows much more dangerous in 1944, when the Nazis move to round up Mischlinge like her. Timothy learns that his mother went into hiding on rural farms and scours the archive for clues to the exact locations. Through photographs, he identifies a man who seems to have played a role in protecting Ursula. Tracking down this man’s granddaughter provides an emotional breakthrough, and...

While his grandfather managed to flee Nazi Germany in 1940 and make it to safety in Ecuador, Timothy’s half-Jewish mother and his gentile grandmother were unable to escape. Timothy turns to his archive to discover what those years were like for them. His mother, Ursula, who was only ten years old when her father fled, bravely writes of her family’s Jewish history in a school assignment, which Timo...

With the rise of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in Germany, destruction comes quickly for a prominent and respected Jewish family, the Kuppenheims. Members of the family are murdered, exiled or chased into hiding. Some eighty years later, Canadian novelist Timothy Taylor inherits a ten thousand page archive of diaries, letters, photographs and other documents kept by his grandfather and begins to...

When mysterious boxes arrive at his Vancouver home, Timothy Taylor begins a journey to uncover his family’s hidden past—a history of persecution, exile, and survival under the Nazis. Traveling from rural Germany to its cultural centers, Timothy pieces together his once-prominent German-Jewish family’s story, determined to honor their memory and give voice to those silenced. Through letters, diarie...