Photo credit, Matt Mendelsohn
Maggie Paxson's Bomb Shelter Cafe is a sing-along event inspired by the collective music of embattled communities of the Holocaust and the Second World War, where audiences join together to find meaning, transcendence, and even laughter in troubled times. Following along from printed lyrics in English, French, Yiddish, and other languages, participants have joined Maggie in raising their voices for resilience at public venues such as Joe's Pub and Albertine Books in New York, in local libraries and recreation centers, and in private homes from Washington, DC, to rural France. Bomb Shelter Cafes evoke an atmosphere of hope and survival, weaving scenes and stories from earlier decades when the creation of beauty was itself an act of resistance, all in the spirit of tikkun olam, the repair of the world.
Maggie Paxson is an anthropologist, writer, and performer and author of The Plateau, a story of survival and rescue in occupied France, which received the 2020 American Library in Paris Book Award for "moral urgency of the questions it poses, for its ambitious efforts to connect France’s past to its present, for its big heart, poetic writing and genre-defying structure." Fluent in Russian and French, Maggie has worked in rural communities in northern Russia, the Caucasus, and upland France. She holds Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Montreal. She performs as a singer with the Imperial Palms Orchestra, one of the East Coast's leading big bands, featuring music of the 1920s through the 1940s.
This program is in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the University of Rochester, and the George Eastman Museum.
Tickets can be reserved in advance, but will also available at the door. Following the program, Maggie will be sign copies of her book, "The Plateau" in the Wolk Concourse. Books are available for purchase at the Museum Shop.
In association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Department of History at the University of Rochester.
Maggie Paxson's Bomb Shelter Cafe
Recorded performance from 09/27/23