Unraveling a Legacy: A Conversation with Menachem Kaiser, Author of Plunder

Please join us for a conversation with Menachem Kaiser, moderated by Kerry Madden-Lunsford (UAB Department of English). The panel will discuss his book Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, which chronicles Kaiser’s journey recovering family property lost during the Holocaust.

The story begins when Kaiser takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Along the way, he discovers that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war but wrote a secret memoir while he was a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex. This leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of local treasure hunters, who revere his relative’s memoir as an indispensable guidebook to finding Nazi loot.

Plunder is both an exciting adventure story and a deeply personal examination of inheritance—material, spiritual, and emotional.

A book signing with the author will take place before and after the event.  

Light refreshments will be served. 

About Menachem Kaiser

Menachem Kaiser is a writer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, has a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright Fellow to Lithuania. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York, BOMB, Vogue, and elsewhere.

Most recently, he wrote a very engaging article in the New York Times about collectors of Nazi memorabilia.

This event is made possible by funding from the Birmingham Jewish Foundation and the UAB College of Arts and Sciences.