Individuals learn, humanity does not

Last Conversations with Holocaust Survivor, Scientist and Humanist Leslie Baruch Brent

Born Lothar Baruch in Köslin (Kozsalin) in 1926 into a Jewish family, Leslie Baruch Brent came to England in 1938 on the first Kindertransport. His relatives were later murdered by the Nazis. After fighting on the side of Great Britain in World War II, Brent dedicated the rest of his life to tolerance.

The conversations focus on life as a refugee and the need to contribute to the host country; questions of ethnic, religious and personal identity; the universality of human rights; the necessity of free scientific research; the moral ambivalence of animal testing; and, last but not least, the pressing question of the future of Europe and open society in general.

What author Heike Tauch did not know was that this would also be one of her last major interviews. Before the recordings could be turned into the hoped-for programme, she succumbed to a long-undiscovered cancer. Her partner and travel companion Florian Goldberg has now edited the extensive material. It documents the encounter between two people from different generations and with different horizons of experience, both of whom were searching in their own way for the answer to a question that has perhaps become even more urgent in the meantime: how to deal with the fact that humanity does not learn?

The feature is the last work that Heike Tauch and Florian Goldberg began together as tauchgold.

Speakers: Inka Löwendorf, Monika Oschek & Florian Goldberg
Director: Beatrix Ackers
Sound: Jean-Boris Szymczak
Editor: Wolfgang Schiller
Producer: Deutschlandfunk 2025