We invite you to join author Michael Hickins in conversation about his family’s life during - and after - the Holocaust. Drawing from his new book, The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family’s True Holocaust Story, Michael will take us on his family’s journey through Nazi Europe, Cuba, and eventually New York, where his own adventures began. He will be joined on stage by Hudson Valley history teacher and social justice organizer Eric Katz.
This event is free, though we ask for RSVPs here for planning purposes. Copies of The Silk Factory will be available for purchase and signing.
About the Book
Acclaimed former journalist Michael Hickins wondered why he seemed doomed to repeat the same pattern of failed marriages and unhappy children. Then came an email from a nephew he knew nothing about -- one that led him to new insights into his family’s life during the Holocaust, the discovery that the silk factory taken from his family by the Nazi government was still in operation, and about the heroism of a French small-town mayor who saved his father’s life. What once seemed like fuzzy anecdotes about the Holocaust came into sharper focus and helped explain why his parents behaved the way they did, laying the foundation for his own behaviors and misadventures.
A powerful examination of the past in light of the present, The Silk Factory is as much an autobiographical descent into the generational trauma induced by history as it is a memoir of the Holocaust itself. Sparked by an email from a nephew he didn’t even know existed, Hickins, a former journalist turned marketing flak, learns of the existence of a silk factory that once belonged to his family before being expropriated by the Nazi government, relives the death of people he never met, and comes to learn of the heroism of Paul Mirat, the mayor of a small village in France who saves his father’s life along with hundreds of others. Hickins is also forced to confront his own patterns of misbehaviors as he tries to raise a young child free of the blood and guilt of the past.
About Michael Hickins
Michael is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal and the critically acclaimed author of the influential short story collection The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing (Alfred A. Knopf, Dzanc Books). He is also the author of a previous memoir, I Lived in France and So Can You (Dzanc Books, 2019). He earned an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University School of the Arts, and was a McDowell Colony residency grantee. The Actual Adventures of Michael Missing has been used as course material at the Columbia University School of the Arts Writing Program.
About Eric Katz
Eric teaches history, geography, and psychology at New Rochelle High School. He has been involved in social justice as Co-chair of the Greenburgh Human Rights Committee (2014-17), Chair of Woodlands Community Temple’s Bridges to Faith and Friendship Task Force (2019-present), and Advisor for the NRHS Human Rights Club. Among many professional opportunities, he has participated in the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center’s Educators Tour to Germany and Poland (2012) and Heart Mountain, Wyoming and the Japanese American Incarceration (National Endowment for the Humanities, 2022). He holds a BA from Haverford College and an MA from the Fletcher School, Tufts University.