Ruta’s Closet: A Holocaust Story from Lithuania | Episode 151

Is your TBR list giving you anxiety? Find out how you can read FASTER! Reader's Anxiety Relief

📚 BUY THE BOOK 👉Purchase Ruta’s Closet here: https://amzn.to/4gzMr8n

🎁 BOOKAHOLIC FREEBIE Want more book recommendations and author interviews?

📩 Join the Bookaholic Newsletter: https://www.book-a-holic.com/newsletter/

👩🏽‍💻 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Keith Morgan was born in January 1954, in Blackpool, England. He began his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper in Blackpool in 1975, moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1980, where he is currently the Driving Editor, for The Province and Vancouver Sun newspapers.

🔗 CONNECT WITH Keith Website: https://www.rutascloset.com

💛 SUPPORT THE PODCAST

⭐ Leave a review on my website and socials.

📌 Subscribe on YouTube

📌Follow me on my TikTok, Facebook, Instagram @truebookaholic

On The Bookaholic Podcast, Keith Morgan discusses his book Ruta’s Closet, centered on Ruth Krone-Siegel’s family surviving the Holocaust in the Šiauliai (Shavel) Lithuania ghetto while also recounting major events in the wider ghetto. Morgan explains how his childhood friendships with Jewish classmates, his reporting career in Vancouver, and a 1997 assignment led him to Ruth’s testimony, which inspired a successful four-part newspaper series for young readers and ultimately the book. He details the ghetto’s purpose as controlled, fenced slave labor, the role of the leather factory in survival, and Ruth’s traumatic loss of her sister Tamara during the children’s roundup. The conversation highlights Lithuania’s largely unknown Holocaust history, ongoing antisemitism, the need for “never forget/never again,” and educational tools on rutascloset.com, including a study guide and book-club talking points, plus plans for youth adaptations and expanded media projects.

00:00 Welcome and Premise

00:07 Why This Story Matters

02:25 Finding Ruth’s Story

02:46 Teen Promise to Journalist

04:45 First Talk at Center

05:45 Tamara’s Heartbreak

08:11 From Series to Book

09:38 Lithuania Hidden History

10:51 Sir Martin Gilbert’s Help

13:48 Baltics and Mass Killings

17:06 What a Ghetto Was

17:58 Survival Through Work

19:41 Life Inside the Ghetto

21:03 Returning to Lithuania

21:47 Smuggling and Public Hangings

22:56 Last Words Remembered

23:52 No Trigger Warnings

25:43 Never Forget Never Again

27:56 Warnings Before Nazis

29:02 Genocide Echoes Today

30:09 Propaganda Social Media

33:33 Denial And Education

35:08 Youth Version With AI

38:45 Podcasts And New Formats

41:32 Final Thanks And Tease

Some links may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.