Letters from Brno: How Karen Kruger rediscovered her family’s Holocaust story
American Karen Kruger grew up without knowing that her mother was Jewish or that she had escaped Czechoslovakia as a child on a Kindertransport. Her search for the family history eventually led to the documentary Letters from Brno and back to the places where generations of the Placzek family had lived. At this year’s ŠTETL FEST, Kruger is once again in South Moravia – and says that after years of returning, Brno increasingly feels like home.
A family history hidden for decades
For much of her childhood, Karen Kruger knew remarkably little about her mother’s past. Her mother and aunt had both left Czechoslovakia as children before the Holocaust, but they rarely spoke about where they came from – or even about their Jewish origins. Karen only learned the truth while at university, when another relative told her. The discovery began what would become a decades-long attempt to reconstruct the history of her family.
“My mother and her sister both hid their pasts, and so I didn't know. I didn't find out she was Jewish until a relative told me when I was in university. I describe it as a switch going off – an insatiable curiosity to put this family puzzle, this history, together. What I could see was that she was so upset when I found out that she was Jewish, and she was very angry that the relative told me because she was still hiding it.”
That search eventually produced Letters from Brno, a PBS documentary written and produced by Kruger and directed by Jeffery L. Gary. Drawing on a large family archive, particularly letters written during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, the film reconstructs the fate of Kruger’s family and the decision to send her mother and aunt to safety in Britain. The documentary has since been broadcast on PBS stations across the United States and has become the basis for Kruger’s work as a Holocaust educator.
At ŠTETL FEST in Brno, Kruger is also presenting a recently completed short film, Daisy and Erika, which follows what happened to the two girls after the war. She says this was the question audiences most frequently asked after screenings of Letters from Brno.
Karen belongs to the Placzek family, whose roots in Brno and South Moravia stretch back generations. Among its best-known members were Rabbi Baruch Placzek and physicist Georg Placzek. This year Karen was also taking part in the laying of Stones of the Disappeared commemorating members of the Placzek family in Alexovice near Ivančice, another place closely connected with her ancestors.
A painful first return
Karen first returned to the Czech Republic with members of her family in 2005. Her mother, who had left the country at the age of ten and had never returned, had initially not planned to join them. At the last moment, however, she changed her mind.
The journey allowed her to see the house where her mother had grown up and other places associated with the family. But for Karen, the return was far from simply a sentimental homecoming. During a tour of properties in Brno that had once belonged to members of her family, she found herself becoming increasingly angry. It was only afterwards that she fully understood why.
“It wasn't just that these things were all stolen. These people, these owners, were all murdered. But no one said, not once, ‘We're so sorry about what happened to your family.’ Not once. And that's what really bothered me. It was almost like you're on a tour and hearing about historical buildings and the families that lived there, with a detachment and a lack of empathy. I think that was really painful for me.”
The experience was complicated further by what the family encountered in Alexovice, where their relatives had owned a textile factory and villa. Kruger recalls hearing a graphic account of the fate of Fritz Placzek, whose death was described as suicide, although members of the family believe he was murdered by the Gestapo.
For Kruger, however, the deeper issue was not only what had happened during the Nazi occupation. It was the apparent absence, decades later, of an acknowledgement of what the family had lost – not merely houses and property, but people.
A new home in Brno
Karen Kruger’s experience when she returned for ŠTETL FEST in 2023 was strikingly different. She came to present Letters from Brno without knowing quite what to expect and says she was surprised by the warmth with which both she and the story of the Placzek family were received.
“I could not believe the reception I had, how warmly I was welcomed, how kindly I was treated. I just felt like, oh my gosh, they really see me as presenting a family that was loved. Baruch Placzek was very much loved in the Jewish community. I felt like I was embraced by strangers. It was very unexpected.”
Since then, Karen has developed particularly strong links with Brno. A former teacher and school administrator, she has created Holocaust educational material based on Letters from Brno and the extensive archive of family letters and documents she has collected. She now takes those materials into classrooms, allowing students to approach the Holocaust through the experiences of one family.
She says the response from Czech teachers and pupils has sometimes been warmer than what she encounters in the United States.
“I have been going to schools really all over the world, but I feel like the students here in Brno and the teachers here welcome me in a way that I'm not even welcomed in schools in the U.S. Teachers here come up to me and say, ‘You were at our school, we saw your film, you brought the archive. The students still talk about it.’ And that happens more here than it does in L.A.”
Karen says her educational work has become more difficult amid the tensions and rise in antisemitism following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza. She says planned appearances have been cancelled at schools in Britain and the United States, with some institutions reluctant to host Holocaust-related programmes.
Her growing attachment to Brno, meanwhile, has become more than symbolic. Kruger is now seeking Czech citizenship and says she hopes eventually to settle in the city. The process has already taken around two years, largely because of the documentation she needs to obtain in the United States, but she remains determined to complete it.
Later in the festival, Kruger will also take part in In Search of a Stolen Past, a discussion bringing together descendants of Jewish families connected with Brno and the surrounding region to consider the legacy of confiscated property and what returning to the places their families once called home means today. For Karen, repeated visits to Brno have already profoundly changed the meaning of that return.
“I feel like Brno is home for me. I am so happy when I'm here, especially when I'm doing work in schools. We have so many friends here now, and I am so embraced by the Jewish community. So yes, my feelings have changed completely.”
