Film: My Illegal Life

In 1942, a Jewish mother, Hella Zacharias, and her five-year-old daughter went into hiding in the Berlin underground. Through Hella's own resourcefulness and the help of others, both mother and daughter survived through the war. In My Illegal Life (Germany, 2024), writer Esther Dischereit, Hella's second-born daughter, follows the traces of her mother's and half-sister's experiences in hiding.

After the screening, there will be a conversation with the film's director Gerhard Schick and Esther Dischereit, moderated by historian Irit Bloch.

This event will be held in person at the Center for Jewish History. If you cannot attend the live event, the discussion will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

About the Speakers

Esther Dischereit grew up in post-war West Germany, the daughter of a mother who survived the Holocaust in hiding and a German father. After her parents’ divorce and her mother’s death she lived with her father and his new family. Her participation in the political unrest of 1968 prevented her from teaching in public schools. She apprenticed as a typesetter and worked in print shops, becoming active in the trade unions. After German reunification in 1989 she moved to Berlin with her two daughters and became a full-time writer, performer, and teacher. She is a critical observer of multi-cultural German society and serves as an intermediary especially between Germany and the United States.

Gerhard Schick, M.A. studied theatre, film and television studies, German philology and history in Cologne and Tel Aviv. Since completing his master’s degree in 1999, he has worked internationally as a writer and director of feature-length documentaries, mainly for public television and cinema. His films have received a number of awards. Since 2016 Gerhard is involved in the development of Virtual and Augmented Reality applications. He is also a passionate teacher who loves to work with students from different disciplines. Gerhard lives in Cologne and Berlin.

Irit Bloch is an interdisciplinary historian working on German and Jewish social and legal history with a focus on judicial prejudices, antisemitism and racism in the twentieth century. She earned her M.A. and PhD in History from The Graduate Center, CUNY. She also holds an L.L.B (JD equivalent) from Tel-Aviv University, Faculty of Law, Israel. Irit’s dissertation examines the relationship between democracy and the judiciary in the Weimar Republic (Germany 1919-1933) and how biased judicial decisions harmed the rule of law and contributed to the breakdown of democracy. Irit’s teaching specializations are modern European history, the Holocaust, Women and Gender studies, and comparative law. In addition to teaching, Irit is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity at The Graduate Center, CUNY.