After his mother’s death, Michael Moritz uncovered tragic family secrets from life in the shadow of Nazi Germany. What can his story teach us about our own era — and the Torah’s commandment to welcome the stranger?
Leaving Germany as child refugees, Michael Moritz’s parents escaped to London before settling in Wales after the war. But the idea of being an outsider — Ausländer — has persisted in Moritz’s life to this day, resurfacing in his adopted home of California, where he has become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated investors. A deeply moving, intimate story about how the ravages of history tore one family apart, Moritz’s new memoir, Ausländer: One Family’s Story of Escape and Exile, raises fresh questions about life in the shadow of authoritarianism — questions that reverberate through our own time. “If it did happen somewhere, it can happen here,” Moritz’s parents warned him. In a culture increasingly skeptical of immigration, how do we provide safe have to outsiders? How can we, as ordinary citizens, halt the march of despots?
Hear Moritz in a conversation that is equal parts family history, elegy, and warning — a moving and intimate evening that reveals how the ravages of history can echo across continents nearly a century later.
“An inspiring and unsettling family and religious tale, but also something larger: a guide to how we all struggle to figure out what we must embrace and what we want to banish from our past.” — Walter Isaacson