Elegant Solutions and A Flower is Not a Rat – storytelling (EN)

From Exile to Return: Jewish Refugee Returns to Kraków to Share His Story 

On 3 July 2026, 89-year-old Dr Len Biran will return to the city of his birth, Kraków, to share the extraordinary story of a life shaped by exile and striving to survive. 

His storytelling performance, Elegant Solutions, honours his father and the resilience, ingenuity and courage that sustained the family living as refugees during the upheavals of the Second World War and its aftermath. 

Born in Kraków in 1937, Len was just two years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Faced with imminent danger, his father fled east with the family, escaping occupied Poland. During the war years, they endured a prison camp in Siberia, followed by life as refugees in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before beginning a remarkable journey that would eventually take them to Israel, Ethiopia and Kenya. 

In Ethiopia, Len’s father was the pharmacist to Emperor Haile Selassie.  

At 18, Len won a scholarship to study biochemistry in the United Kingdom.  With his father as his inspiration, his career included being a researcher in molecular biology, working for UNESCO, and university lecturer and a village doctor in the Global South, and being a GP in Leeds. 

This summer, Len returns to Kraków not as a refugee, but as a storyteller.  His performance at the High Synagogue, in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter on 3 July forms part of the internationally renowned Kraków Jewish Culture Festival. 

Len will tell us about his father’s resourcefulness and humanity in a world turned upside down by war. He will be joined by his wife, Ruth Steinberg, an accomplished storyteller in her own right. 

The stories they tell carry profound personal significance for them. They pay tribute to Basia, Len’s mother’s best friend from before the war. During the war Basia, who was not Jewish, was a partisan and hid Len’s six-year-old cousin from the Nazis for 5 long years.  Len and Ruth had the privilege of meeting Basia in 2001in Krakow.  Basia hadn’t seen Len, her best friend’s little boy, since 1939.   Ruth and Len are friends with her family to this day.  Basia’s story will be honoured in Ruth’s performance  

The Kraków Jewish Culture Festival is known internationally for its vibrant celebration of Jewish life, music, history and culture.  It provides a fitting setting for Len’s return to his birthplace to tell his stories of exile. 

As Ruth says in one of her stories:
“This is what true victory looks like.”