Beyond Benno: Premsela Family Stories

This storytelling event at the National Holocaust Museum explores the stories of the Premsela family before, during, and after the war. Their determination, intelligence, and – ultimately – hope paint a picture of 20th-century Amsterdam.

Premsela family
Benno Premsela was a 20th-century icon. He was a unifying leader of the queer community who broke ground by talking on 1960s TV about his life as a gay man. He was also a hugely successful designer who mentored succeeding generations.

And yet, his largely forgotten family members are equally interesting. His father Benedictus was a doctor who specialized in birth control and sexual health at a time when this was hugely controversial. His sister Elly was a trained artist who became a beautician and nurse under Nazi occupation. His cousin Jenny was a jeweler to the court who wrote a memoir about escaping occupation.

Storytellers
Storytellers Elyzabeth Gorman and Guus Møystad interweave the family’s experiences to form a mosaic of Jewish Amsterdam in the 20th-century.

Elyzabeth Gorman, born in the United States of America, is the founder and sole researcher of Badass Tours. When she moved to Amsterdam and discovered the amazing stories in Dutch history, she made it her mission to tell these stories for an international audience.

Her historical storytelling includes performances throughout Amsterdam and the Netherlands in general. Her oeuvre contains many stories through Amsterdam’s hidden history through which she led hundreds of tours.

Guus Møystad is a Dutch-Norwegian visual artist, writer, and storyteller based in Amsterdam. His multicultural upbringing in Lebanon, Norway, and Belgium has resulted in a chaotic hodgepodge of identities that never settle for long. This tangle is continued in his work, where story, text, image, truth, and fiction weave in and out of each other, expressed in various art forms.

Toegang: museumticket + € 5,00