Join us for a staged reading about life in wartime Ukraine told through first-hand accounts and on-the-ground photography co-presented by Centropa and the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA. Over the last year, Ukrainian teachers and students have been writing to the oral history institute Centropa to document and share their stories, fears, and hopes. Four actors will bring these stories to life, as well as prewar stories told by elderly Ukrainian Jews, juxtaposing Germany’s invasion of Ukraine in 1941 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today. 
 

Cast
Sarah Drew (Grey’s Anatomy, Everwood)
Mitchell Kummen (Ties That Bind)
Susan Sullivan (The Kominsky Method, Castle)
Steven Weber (Chicago Med, Wings, Curb Your Enthusiasm)

Musicians
Nicole Garcia—Violin
Michael D. Mortilla—Piano
 

A discussion follows the performance featuring Tablet Magazine deputy editor, Jeremy Stern; founding director of Centropa, Edward Serotta; UCLA professor in the department of Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures, Lilya Kaganovsky; and Yevhen Minko, visiting graduate researcher at UCLA from Kyiv, Ukraine. 

Accompanying the presentation is a series of photographs taken by Maks Levin, a photojournalist and Centropa worker who was killed by Russian forces on the seventeenth day of the war.

Arrive early to view the exhibitions—including Peter Krasnow: Breathing Joy and Light, which features post–World War II works by the acclaimed Ukrainian fine artist.