Café Atara. Begegnungen im Exil

In the organizer's words:

For the German Jews who fled from Nazi Germany to Palestine in the 1930s, Jerusalem was a place of life-saving safety and exchange, but also of loss and rejection. For many of them encountered a lack of understanding and resistance with their intention to continue living their German language and culture in exile, as well as their commitment to understanding and peaceful coexistence for all people in the region. Café Atara became their most important meeting place, a temporary home. Also for Arnold Zweig, Gabriele Tergit, Else Lasker-Schüler, Beatrice Zweig, Erich Mendelsohn and Sammy Gronemann.

The project "Café Atara. Encounters in Exile" by Kane Kampmann and Brian Michaels brings the lives and experiences of these people to Cologne in an exemplary way and brings the past into the present. Six actors embody the six Jewish emigrants and enter into dialog with the café's visitors at the tables. They talk about "their" lives, read from texts, answer questions and discuss. Room-filling projections also visualize their life stories.

"Café Atara" is not a play! It is a communicative project. The topics of flight, exile and identity, but also home, exclusion, loss of language and culture, generalized hostility and assimilation, are as relevant today as they were then. And always pose the question: "Where do I find my place in the world"?

Café Atara is opening again - and anyone interested is welcome to join us! Admission is free. Registration required at www.cafe-atara.de