Jeannette Grunhaus de Gelman -“On Sunny Days We Sang”

Jeannette Grunhaus de Gelman will be telling the story of her parents survival in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Her novel On Sunny Days We Sang was first published in Spanish in 2018 under the title En los días claros cantábamos.  The author grew up in Maracaibo, Venezuela where her parents found refuge in 1946. The family integrated rapidly into the bustling Jewish Community that flourished in Venezuela. But as Second Generation Survivor, her parent’s trauma was always present in her life. This is what drove her in the need to understand what happened to the family she never had and whose absence she always felt strongly. 

About the Speaker:

Jeannette Grunhaus de Gelman is a Venezuelan professor, researcher, and writer. She was born in Szczecin, Poland in 1946, to Polish Holocaust survivors who came from Wlodawa. Her family emigrated to Venezuela, settling in Maracaibo. Gelman received her undergraduate degree in French from Wellesley College.  She went on to receive an MA in Spanish Literature from New York University via their extension program in Madrid in 1970 and in 1976 was awarded her MA in the teaching of French from the Université de Paris III. She was a professor of French Language and Literature at the Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo from 1971 to 1996.

Travelling is one of her passions but finally in 2013 she moved to Miami, Florida with a purpose in mind. As Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor, her parents’ trauma was always present in her life and she felt the need to understand what happened to the family she never had. From 2013 to 2018 she was accepted as a Research Scholar at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, focusing on Holocaust studies.