Conversations with friends about their lives: Orit Yasu

Born to recently arrived Ethiopian-Israeli parents, Orit Yasu talks with Tom Gross about growing up in Kiryat Malachi, the rescue of Ethiopian Jews by the Mossad, her participation in the 1999 Columbine High School shooting memorial while on a school trip to Colorado, on how NYC is too crowded, her trip to see her parents village Ethiopia, and why many Ethiopian-Israelis vote Likud.
Discussion with by zoom in Shoham in Israel while under covid lockdown, on May 31, 2020
Other conversations in this series:
Pianist Evgeny Kissin (Prague) • Conversations with fri...
Described by The Economist magazine as “the world’s most acclaimed classical pianist” Evgeny Kissin talks about being a child prodigy; his favorite concert halls and musicians; learning new repertoires and visiting Kafka’s grave during coronavirus lockdown; about Stalin’s murder of Yiddish writers, his own love for Yiddish, his support for Israel, and his political views about Russia and the West.
Writer David Pryce-Jones (Wales) • Conversations with fri...
Writer David Pryce-Jones discusses his life, his childhood escape from the Nazis, and about his friendships with Isaac Bashevis Singer, Arthur Koestler, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, John Gross and others; and about Israel, Italy, and the New York Times.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hossein Amini (London) • Conversations with fri...
Born in Tehran to a distinguished Iranian family (his grandfather was prime minister under the shah) Oscar-nominated screenwriter and film director Hoss Amini speaks with his friend Tom Gross about Iran before and after the Islamic revolution, his career as a filmmaker, his work with Martin Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein, his favorite films, and says that ‘it’s no accident that the MeToo movement started in tolerant Hollywood’. We also discuss racism in Britain.
The last Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff (Jerusalem) • Conversations with fri...
Efraim Zuroff speaks about why he became a Nazi hunter, his pursuit of war criminals all over the world over many decades, and his efforts to make countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Croatia admit to their own nation’s very substantial collaboration with the Nazi genocide. As the last survivors die out where does Holocaust education and memory go from here?
Why did it take Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List to make Holocaust education finally become incorporated into the British education system some years later? Why did western countries and the Vatican and Red Cross help Nazi criminals escape at the end of the war? Why were so many doctors Nazis?
We also discuss the trial of Bruno Dey (charged for his part in the murder of 5,230 people at Stutthof death camp) which is continuing now in Hamburg - it is 75 years late but the German judge insisted it continue despite the coronavirus restrictions.
John O’Sullivan (Budapest) • Conversations with fri...
Born to modest parents near Liverpool (his father was a ship steward, his mother a shop girl) John O’Sullivan rose to become one of Margaret Thatcher’s most trusted aides and advisors in 10 Downing Street. In this zoom conversation, he discusses Thatcher’s personality and how she developed her views, and other leading figures he met. (On one occasion John had breakfast with Thatcher in London, then flew to Washington and had dinner with President Reagan that same evening.) He and Tom Gross also discuss Donald Trump’s presidency; the future of journalism; and his lifelong love for musical theatre.
Bahra Saleh (Kirkuk, Iraq) • Conversations with fri...
On being a woman, and fleeing Saddam as a Kurd, in Iraq
Rt Hon Lord (David) Young of Graffham • Conversation with frie...
Lord Young talks about his life, his ten years in Downing Street working closely with Margaret Thatcher, his five years in Downing Street working with David Cameron, and about Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and modern multicultural Britain.
Writer Nidra Poller (Paris) • Conversations with fri...
Writer Nidra Poller discusses hanging out with James Baldwin and other African-American writers and musicians in 1970s Paris, the origins of the name Nidra, how her Japanese partner introduced her to Israel, and the position of women in the modern world.
Susan Loewenthal Lourenco (Berlin) • Conversations with fri...
Educator Susan Lourenco talks about being the child of refugees from Berlin, her life in four different countries and how she reconciled herself with modern Germany.