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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A day of remembrance

April 12, 2010 - 12:01 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

There’s some strange timing going on right now in the Poland-Israel relationship. While there’s no way to compare the millions murdered during the Shoah with the tragic death of Polish leader Lech Kaczynski and the others killed in Saturday’s plane crash, it is noteworthy that so many thousands of Jewish and Israeli teenagers and adults are in Poland right now, taking part in Holocaust Remembrance Day at the end of March of the Living and other, similar heritage trips to Poland.

The March of the Living program is planning on beginning today’s program in Warsaw with a special tribute to Kaczynski, as the 10,000 participants conduct their ‘march of the living.’

Over here in Israel, I was walking down Derech Hevron, Hebron Road in Jerusalem, making my way to a meeting after stopping in the bank, just minutes before the ‘sefira’, or siren, sounded at 10:00 am in memory of the six million dead. During my early years in Israel, like many who are new olim, I liked to place myself somewhere public for the siren, in order to fully appreciate just how everything stops for that one minute. This year, as in recent years, I hadn’t paid that much attention to where I was going to be, until I noticed scores of teenagers, some South American, others North American — but no locals — all hanging out on various corners, clearly waiting to experience the Yom Hashoa siren. It is striking to watch everything stop, from pedestrians to traffic, watching everything and everyone come to a total standstill.

As for myself, I was hiking up the stairs toward my meeting, and found myself just outside the door. Not a bad place to be for contemplating the tragedy that was the Holocaust.

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Holocaust Remembrance Day and Durban II

April 20, 2009 - 9:58 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Politics 

holocaustHolocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Monday evening here, is always a solemn occasion. But this year, with the ghoulishly ironic juxtaposition of the Durban II racism conference taking place in Geneva, there’s an added measure of stark sobriety.

Even as Israelis pause to ponder the memory of the six million Jews who perished during the Nazi regime from 1933-1945, the gathering in Geneva demonstrates that there are still people who would like Israel – and by association – Jews to cease to exist.

So while Iran, Libya and the other latter day plotters gather for their bash-Israel fest, we’ll be remembering. The theme of the annual state ceremony, beginning at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial is ‘Children in the Holocaust.’ Some 1.5 million Jewish children were killed by the Nazis. As part of the theme, a 16-year-old musician will play a violin that belonged to a 12-year-old partisan, Mordechai (Motele) Schlein, killed in the Holocaust and whose violin is on display at Yad Vashem. The museum is also launching a new exhibition and material about children killed in the Holocaust – accessible on Yad Vashem’s Web site

According to a Hebrew University demographer – Professor Sergio Della Pergola – if not for the Holocaust there would be as many as 32 million Jews in the world today, instead of the current 13 million. Before the outbreak of World War II, there were an estimated 16.5 million Jews in the world.

Just imagine how the world might have been different if all the scientists, doctors, musicians and every other Jew who perished had gone on to live their full lives. We’ll never know what their impact would have been, but by refuting and condemning the lies which are going to come out of Durban II, we’ll be helping to insure that such wanton human destruction doesn’t take place again.

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