Screening and Filmmaker Talkback: "The Girl with the Golden Hair"

One photo in the album has haunted Herwig: It shows a young Jewish girl with blonde hair, waiting to be deported from the small town of Dobrzyn in Western Poland on November 9, 1939.

The Girl with the Golden Hair. A Lost Photo and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust follows Herwig’s attempt to identify the young girl using modern AI facial recognition. While she ultimately remains a mystery, Herwig‘s search led to an unexpected and moving breakthrough: He was able to positively identify a young boy sitting next to her in the photograph.

Herwig traced the boy‘s story and found his surviving family. According to the MEMO Jugendstudie (2023), nearly two-thirds of young Germans under 25 years believe their own family members weren't perpetrators during the Nazi era. Malte Herwig is challenging this perception with his documentary. The film shows how we can reclaim lost biographies from Nazi perpetrators' pictures. It’s a fervent call to action for young Germans: dig up your family past and ask questions.

Stay after the screening for a talkback with filmmaker Malte Herwig, moderated by Grzegorz Kwiatkowski. Light reception to follow.

This event is in partnership with the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center and Solas Nua.

About Malte Herwig:

Malte Herwig is the author of seven books, including the bestsellers "Post-War Lies: Germany and Hitler’s Long Shadow" and "The Woman Who Says No". He is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and reporter working for German and English media (German Public Television, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Spiegel, Guardian, New York Times, BBC). In 2019, he created and hosted the No. 1 Apple podcast "Faking Hitler" on the forged Hitler diaries scandal.

Herwig was born in Kassel, Germany. From 2000 to 2003 he was a Fellow at Merton College at Oxford and in 2002 received his doctorate degree with a thesis on Thomas Mann called Bildungsbürger auf Abwegen: Naturwissenschaft im Werk Thomas Manns. In 2004, Herwig's dissertation won the first Thomas Mann Prize from the Thomas Mann Society in Lübeck.

His articles have appeared widely in U.S., British and German publications, including The New York Times, The Observer, Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 2008, Herwig was the first to publish some of Vladimir Nabokov's original index cards from the author's last unfinished novel The Original of Laura. In the accompanying article, Herwig concluded that "Laura", although fragmentary, was "vintage Nabokov". He is the author of several books, among them a biography of Austrian poet Peter Handke and a study of the greatest Nazi cover-up in post-war Germany, "Die Flakhelfer", which was published in English in 2014. Known for his interviews, Herwig was the only journalist to get an interview with former SS-Captain Erich Priebke, which he conducted in Priebke's flat in Rome shortly before the latter's death on 11 October 2013. Referring to Hannah Arendt's famous phrase about the Nazis when she covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, The New York Times quoted Herwig as saying he wanted to use “the last chance to investigate that supposed banality of evil with a living person.”. Sensationally, the 100-year-old Priebke told Herwig he had renounced national socialism and deeply regretted his involvement in war crimes.

About Grzegorz Kwiatkowski:

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a distinguished Polish poet, musician, academic, and human rights activist. He is the Fortunoff Video Archive Artist-in-Residence in 2025 at Yale University, where he also collaborates with Peter Cole. Kwiatkowski has earned international recognition for both his poetry and his activism. His literary works, including the acclaimed collection Crops, tackle profound themes of violence, genocide, and human rights. Translated by Peter Constantine, Crops has been published in the United States, and beyond. Kwiatkowski’s poetry is not merely a reflection on the past, but an urgent call to confront the realities of hatred and violence in the present. He conducts readings and speaks regularly at universities around the world. Kwiatkowski is also an activist who helped uncover nearly half a million pairs of shoes left to decay near the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. Kwiatkowski has been fighting for the site to be preserved and recognized officially as a site of memory. During his residency at the Fortunoff Archive, Kwiatkowski will combine testimony, historical research, and his artistic vision to create a new work that speaks to the enduring importance of remembering the atrocities of the Holocaust. He plans to exhibit this work in both Gdańsk and at Yale University, further bridging the historical connection between Poland and the wider world.

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