Tag: Holocaust

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Sunday: Documentary Lives Restarted Celebrates Memphis’ Holocaust Survivors

Waheed AlQawasmi says his own experience as an immigrant colored his documentary Lives Restarted “I was born and raised in Jordan, and I emigrated here when I was 13,” says the director. “That was one of my main impetus for the story. You see a lot of holocaust documentaries, but they never really talk about what happened after, which was as much of a struggle as it was during the war. I had a couple of survivors tell me it was a bigger struggle for them, because they came here, they didn’t speak the language, they had no friends, and they literally didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.”

Director Waheed AlQawasmi conducts an interview with Memphis holocaust survivors for Lives Restarted.

AlQawasami’s company, WA Films, is a successful commercial video production house, and he used his considerable skills to tell this remarkable story of triumph over ultimate tragedy. “The way this project came together is, the Jewish Community Partners wanted to do a 3-4 minute video celebrating the accomplishments of the Holocaust survivors in Memphis to present it in their Yom Ha’Shoah program this year, which is a day of remembrance about the Holocaust. They approached a gentleman named Jerry Erlich, an advertising executive in town. I work with him a lot, we do commercials together. I said I would love to do it, and we just kind of went from there. We convinced them to turn this into a mini documentary to educate kids in schools about immigrants and their success stories, to show these people’s struggle.”

Lives Restarted skillfully combines archival footage of World War II and its immediate aftermath with contemporary interviews of Memphis holocaust survivors and their children. Much of the historical holocaust material came from Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. “I spent two weeks calling every day until I could get someone on the line. They were very kind and sent us that footage over to use. Between me, Brian and Ryan, we cleaned it up and tweaked the color. The reason I went out of my way to try to find those shots, is because of the educational nature of the venues in which this is going to be exhibited. Kids these days, if you put black and white in front of them, they’re not going to watch it. They’re just going to be bored. If it’s cut like a talking head documentary, they’re going to tune out. So we tried to cut it like a modern movie. We showed it at St. Mary’s, and none of the kids were on their phone the entire time.”

Although it is a historical documentary, AlQawasmi says he and his subjects found it remarkably—and depressingly—timely. “This was my way of dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis. I volunteered my time for this movie, although we had a budget. We put all the money on camera. I wanted to show people that this is a part of history that most of know about, and here’s what happened with the people after, and their struggle. Some of the survivors I talked to are really shocked at the way our politics are going right now. We just went through this, guys. And now you’ve got someone saying, ‘Kick everyone out!’ Most Americans associate Jews in America as being welcome in America, but history doesn’t remember it that way. What they’re saying about the Syrians now—that they’re spies and combatants who are trying to take over our country—are the same things they were saying about the Jews after the war. That’s why they didn’t come to America for up to ten years after the war, in some cases.”

The director says the film is also a way of giving back to people who came to his aid in his time of need, and he hopes his example will strike a blow against hatred. “I’m a Palestinian making a documentary about Jewish holocaust survivors. You have a lot of the Arab world who are not very knowledgeable about this material. They just see what they see on the news and say, ‘All Jews are bad.’ I never even met a Jewish person until I moved here at age 13. I had to meet someone to make an informed decision. It turned out to be one of the best communities I’ve ever witnessed in my life. They’ve been my friends, and I’ve worked with a lot of Jewish small businesses, and witnessed how to create a new life. When my dad left us, the only people who stood by me were my Jewish friends and employers. They helped me through my struggle.”

Indie Memphis Sunday: Documentary Lives Restarted Celebrates Memphis’ Holocaust Survivors

Lives Restarted screens as part of the Hometowner Cultural Documentaries bloc at Circuit Playhouse on Sunday, November 6 at 1:30 PM. You can purchased tickets and festival passes on the Indie Memphis website.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas takes us back to Germany at the outset of World War II. The film’s protagonist is Bruno (Asa Butterfield), an 8-year-old boy who’s smart, brave, and adventurous but mostly confused by what’s going on in the world and at home. His father (David Thewlis), a high-ranking SS officer, has taken a promotion that relocates the family away from Berlin, to the Polish countryside. The family’s change in scenery mirrors another, much more sinister one: the moving of the Jews into a concentration camp.

Bruno’s bored in his new setting, especially because his mother (Vera Farmiga) forbids him from exploring the woods behind the home. Bruno can see a strange sort of “farm” through the trees, where the “farmers” wear striped pajamas. He befriends a boy about his age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) on the other side of the fence. Bruno’s emotions are a swarm of conflicts, and what truths he’s told by his parents and tutor (Jim Norton) don’t align with what he’s seeing with his own eyes. That the lies come from his own father and that his mother is increasingly upset compound his predicament. His sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), is no help: She embraces Hitler Youth to such a degree that she even has Nazi posters on her bedroom wall like they’re pin-up Tiger Beat heartthrobs.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is rated PG-13 and is based on the YA novel by John Boyne. What’s happening in the film is no surprise to adults and probably isn’t for most young teens. It’s as brilliantly effective a movie about the Holocaust as I’ve seen. A pile of discarded dolls masterfully metaphors the real atrocities, but the film eventually literalizes — it has to, really — for Bruno and the audience what genocide looks like. The horror is so massive it’s hard for any adult to comprehend it — as we have been trying to do for seven decades and counting — so I’m not sure what chance a kid would have.

The 2008 film was originally marketed as a Holocaust movie for younger audiences. Thirteen is probably about right for the youngest viewers. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas completely destroyed me. I don’t know that I would recommend it for anyone Bruno’s age.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Behold, the Rabbit!

My contracts professor in law school, a man I will always remember for introducing me to the concept that, as he put it, “all professions are an organized conspiracy against the layman,” also had an explanation for why some outcomes are foregone conclusions. He said, “It’s no big deal for the magician to pull the rabbit out of the hat after he’s put it there.”

So, it came as no surprise to me that Iran, a state whose leaders’ two major geopolitical purposes are wiping the state of Israel off the map (along, not incidentally, with its inhabitants) and the development of nuclear weapons (the latter being instrumental in the accomplishment of the former), held a “conference” in Tehran last week for the purpose of exploring whether or not the Holocaust ever happened. No kidding: They held a conference to investigate the existence of this indisputable blot on the history of mankind.

This is the equivalent of the religious right sponsoring a conference entitled “Gay Marriage: Is It a Good Thing?” or PETA holding a conference called “Killing Animals: Is It Really Humane?”

A clue to the agenda of this gathering is that a keynote address was given by none other than noted American authority David Duke, the former Grand Wacko of the Ku Klux Klan, who, in a recent interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, suggested that a list of the names of the architects of the war in Iraq (e.g., Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, et al.) sounded like the guests at a Jewish wedding.

One of the seminars at the conference was reportedly called “Gas Chambers: Denial or Confirmation.” The conference’s Web site has links to other denier sites claiming that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were actually either kitchens that served inmates low-fat meals (which must explain their skeleton-like appearance when they were liberated) or saunas where inmates could enjoy “hot showers” (with no extra charge, apparently, for the Zyklon B gas treatment).

For me, the verifiability of the Holocaust was as tangible as the tattooed number my father bore on his forearm for most of his life, a vestige of his captivity in Auschwitz, and the absence from my life of both sets of grandparents and many uncles, cousins, and aunts — all thanks to the ethnic cleansing practiced on my family by the Nazis. Needless to say, I don’t take kindly to Holocaust deniers.

How does one deal with people who insist on believing that it is pitch-black outside at high noon or, worse, who reinvent (or ignore) facts to fit their agenda? The answer is, one doesn’t. Intelligent discourse relies on the existence of intelligence. And simple belief, whatever its motivation, is irrationally based and immune to intelligence. That same contracts professor also liked to say: “Nothing is truer than that which is true by hypothesis.” As long as the fringes of society choose to believe that what they hypothesize — as opposed to what is objectively verifiable — is the truth, there is no room for discussion.

This also, by the way, is why it is a fool’s errand to argue with the likes of a Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter and why George Bush will never be able to be convinced that the U.S. should pull its troops out of Iraq.

The Iranians were taunting the West by holding this conference. They claimed they were testing our tolerance for freedom of speech, especially in light of what they perceive to be the abuse of that freedom symbolized by the Muhammad-cartoon imbroglio in Denmark earlier this year. They started their taunt several months ago with a “contest” seeking the best Holocaust cartoons. One of the entries depicted Hitler in bed with Anne Frank, suggesting to her that she “put this one in your diary.”

The irony of a repressive regime ridiculing a freedom that is ruthlessly crushed under its own rule obviously escapes them. And, of course, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the uniquely American constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech to believe that it is absolute. One can only hope that Ahmadinejad and his ilk will learn sooner than later that neither freedom of speech nor any other freedom protects madmen who attempt to rationalize genocide by revising its history.

Marty Aussenberg writes the “Gadfly” column for MemphisFlyer.com.

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News The Fly-By

Close to Home

Leonid Saharovici lives a quiet life. The 79-year-old retiree has two grown sons and five grandchildren and lives happily with his wife in their Germantown home.

But Saharovici’s life wasn’t always so pleasant. When World War II broke out, he was a 13-year-old Jewish boy living in Romania.

“The Germans occupied Romania, and my father was taken to a labor camp, leaving me with my mother and grandmother,” recalls Saharovici, a soft-spoken man who, despite living over 30 years in Memphis, still speaks with a heavy accent.

Two years later, Saharovici was also forced into a labor camp where he and other children dismantled bombs, gardened, and shoveled snow.

Saharovici’s story is one of 14 featured in Transported Lives, a documentary on Holocaust survivors living in Memphis. It is set to premiere on WKNO on October 5th at 8:30 p.m.

The film was an independent project of Lunar Productions, a locally owned company that specializes in videos for corporate marketing. For the past six years, president Mark Wender and senior director Trish Warren interviewed survivors.

“Most people in Memphis don’t know that there are people who survived the Holocaust living in our community,” says Wender. “In 10 or 20 years, all the survivors will be gone, so we wanted to have something permanent to tell their stories.”

The film follows a chronological format, starting with people remembering their lives before the war and ending with their living in Memphis.

“Many of them hadn’t talked about the Holocaust in years. Some hadn’t even told their children,” says Warren. “But by the time they got to us, they were ready.”

Most of the interviews were arranged through Saharovici. After moving to Memphis from Romania in 1972, Saharovici formed the Baron Hirsch Holocaust Memorial Organization, a network of local survivors focused on Holocaust education and outreach. In 1982, the group had 40 survivors. Today, only 13 of the original members are left. However, there are other Holocaust survivors living in Memphis who are not a part of the group.

“We want to educate people in Memphis and elsewhere about the Holocaust,” says Wender. “Ultimately, we’d like all the schools and churches to have copies of the film, so when they teach the Holocaust, they’ll have something authentic.”