Book Launch: Ronald Roberts, The Lad who Outwitted the Nazis

Book Launch: Ronald Roberts, The Lad who Outwitted the Nazis: From Weimar Germany to Windrush Britain. By Carol Roberts, edited with an introduction by Eve Rosenhaft.

Join us for the launch of a new book based on a man whose archive collection is held in the Wiener Holocaust Library: Ronald Roberts, The Lad Who Outwitted the Nazis. From Weimar Germany to Windrush Britain, by Carol Roberts, edited with an introduction by Eve Rosenhaft (Peter Lang Publishers).

Carol Roberts’ new book documents in text and photos the extraordinary life of a man who was both a Black German and a British Empire national.

Ronald Roberts was born in Germany in 1921. As the son of a Barbadian father and a White German mother, Roberts suffered racial persecution in Nazi Germany and spent the Second World War interned in a civilian camp as a British national. After the war, he made a new life for himself working with the British military in occupied Austria and finally settled in a postwar Britain that was barely coming to terms with its own colonial legacy. His experiences along the way are a record of endurance, inventiveness and the stubborn refusal to ‘go under’ in the face of persistent racism.

At this launch event the book’s editor, Eve Rosenhaft, will explain how it came to be written and how Ronald’s story is and isn’t typical of the experience of Black Germans under the Nazis.

London artist Michèle Franklin will talk about her own encounter with Ronald’s story and display some of the artwork that it has inspired and actor-playwright Tayo Aluko will read from the text.

Eve Rosenhaft taught at the University of Liverpool before retiring in 2021. Her publications in Black German studies include Black Germany (2013), Slavery Hinterland (2016), Black German (2017) and Mnemonic Solidarity (2021). She also acted as historical consultant for Amma Asante’s 2018 film Where Hands Touch.

Michèle Franklin is a prize-winning graphic artist who has been exhibiting her paintings and drawings in major galleries, including the Royal Academy, since the 1980s. During the 1990s she produced a series of works on paper inspired by Holocaust histories. She was born in Vermont, USA, her mother an African American teacher and her father a member of a distinguished Anglo-Jewish family.

Tayo Aluko was born in Nigeria, and worked as an architect in Liverpool for 15 years. He is now a playwright, actor and singer whose one man plays have received critical acclaim. Tayo has a number of appearances in TV dramas and feature films to his name.

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