Remembering the survivors

April 12, 2010 - 12:43 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Profiles, Social Justice 

The siren rings on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem (AP)

On Holocaust Remembrance Day which is currently in full swing, the memories of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

But local filmmaker David Blumenfeld’s short film ‘Remember Me’ places the spotlight on the survivors who made their way to Israel.

According to a recent study by the Myers JDC Brookdale Institute, about half of the estimated 233,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel lack money for home. ‘Remember Me’ focuses on three survivors who open up about their daily struggles living in poverty, and how they were eventually helped by a non-profit organization called House to House.

The organization, founded in 1999 by Ohio immigrant Darla Oz, offers aid to some of Israel’s neediest citizens. But after reading a 2007 story in ‘The Jerusalem Post’ about the economic hardships faced by 86-year-old survivor Leopold Rozen, she established Project Dignity in order to provide assistance to survivors and improve the their substandard living conditions.

Blumenfeld, a native of New Orleans who moved to Israel in 2000. became friends with Oz, and when she asked him to produce a documentary on the subject, he jumped at the chance.

Interviewing dozens of survivors for the documentary, Blumenfeld chose to focus on the lives of three – Rozen, Ronnie Markovich and Tova Farkash, who talk about their personal experiences during the war, their arrival to the Jewish Homeland, and their daily struggles living in poverty.

“When I went out and saw some of the living conditions and how they’re suffering, and then how they’ve been transformed by House to House, it really inspired me to put my heart and soul into the film,” Blumenfeld told me.

“The three survivors came from totally different places with different stories of survival. For each of them, there’s a pre-war life, their incredible stories of survival, and then their coming to Israel. What I did was try to combine the three stories into one Holocaust story,” he said.

Blumenfeld, who co-produced the successful 2008 documentary Circumcise Me: The Comedy of Yisrael Campbell, and whose photographic work has appeared in Newsweek, TIME, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, has his own connection to the Holocaust – his grandfather’s mother and brother were both killed in Treblinka.

“I’ve been working on a film project for about five years about the town in Poland that my grandfather came from. So, I feel more connected to the Holocaust now than I ever was,” he said.

While Holocaust Remembrance Day only lasts for 24 hours, a screening of Remember Me to benefit House to House will take place on Wednesday night (April 14) at the Kehilat Yedidya synagogue in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood in the attendance of some survivors.

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Anglo humor

July 4, 2008 - 11:32 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Pop Culture 

The reality of Israel includes the overwhelming presence of bonafide Sabras, those native-born, resh-rolling, confidence-abounding locals whose ranks have grown to include a host of other kinds of Israelis, from immigrant Russians, Americans, Brits and Aussies to Ethiopians, South Africans, French, Spanish and every other nationality imaginable.

Americans in Israel constitute a group of about 200,000, but we’re generally lumped together with all the other Anglos — — as in Anglo Saxon, as native English speakers here are known — with the only differentiation being the twangs with which we speak, and how that emerges in Hebrew.

Last night, I attended one of those singularly ‘Anglo’ events, the premiere of Circumcise Me, about the comedy of American-Israeli Yisrael Campbell, in a film made by two other Anglos, photographer David Blumenfeld who originally hails from the States and writer Matthew Kalman who immigrated to Israel from England. It’s a short film, about 50 minutes long, about Campbell, a former Philadelphian, Angeleno and now Jerusalemite, as well as three-time convert to Judaism, his life in Israel and his life decisions. It’s funny, smart and clearly resonated with the packed, mostly immigrant audience at a local neighborhood theater.

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I’m not going to give away the jokes — which are plentiful and funny — except to say that they will resonate with many audiences, Jewish or non-Jewish, Israeli or other. But there was something else that was happening in the Smadar theater last night, involving the microcosm of the smaller Anglo community within the larger Israeli community, the melding of two very different cultures that creates something new and different that doesn’t necessarily clash or impose one culture upon another. It’s a blend, maybe an unexpected one that can feel like an insulated bubble at times, but can also function as a way of viewing and understanding the Middle Eastern world in which we’re living.

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