The Survivor in a Tuxedo - a new documentary film about Elie Wiesel by veteran filmmaker, David Fisher

The Survivor in a Tuxedo, Tracing Elie Wiesel is a new documentary, directed by David Fisher, a veteran documentary filmmaker, noted for his films, including The Round Number, Six Million and One, and Love Inventory.

This new film, which is both complex and fascinating, on the famous Holocaust survivor, author, spokesman, storyteller and public figure Eli Wiesel (1928-2016), premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival last night. I viewed the film, with my husband, Ron Kronish, and since we both loved the film, the review below is from both of us.

Introducing the people who worked on the film, at the screening last night, the director David Fisher talked about his father, also a survivor.  His father came from a town not so far from Wiesel’s in Romania, and they were on the same train to Auschwitz, but their paths were so different.  Elie Wiesel used the power of the word to give witness, non-stop, to what happened to the Jews in the Shoah.  Fisher’s father, instead, took up arms and became part of the struggle defending and creating the modern State of Israel, working as a pioneer in the new state, using deeds instead of words to cope with what he had experienced at Auschwitz.  The stories of these two Holocaust survivors are weaved together in this intensely personal and poignant documentary film.

Using interviews, animation, and raw footage, which are all weaved together brilliantly, Fisher has made a complicated and respectful portrayal of this famous Jewish thinker and activist.   We learn a great deal about Wiesel’s thinking, writing, activism and leadership in the USA and internationally.  Wiesel’s strength was seen and heard in his many speeches and his prolific literature. Throughout his career, he was always involved in giving witness, in keeping the memory of the Shoah alive. He was relentless in this mission.  Wiesel wrote 58 books in his lifetime and he had a clear agenda.

The film provides an intimate portrayal of this historic figure in contemporary Jewish history and does not shy away from some of the controversial issues which came to be associated with Elie Wiesel in his later years. For example, many people were critical of him because he became wealthy, and they accused him of using the Holocaust to get rich. Others were unhappy that he didn’t raise his voice to denounce Israel’s immoral policies against the Palestinians living under Occupation, since he had raised his voice for so many oppressed people in so many other places in the world. Others were bothered that Bibi Netanyahu used him as a prop in the gallery when he spoke in the US Congress against President Obama’s policies with regard to negotiating with Iran.

Other people were critical of his need for more and more international recognition.  Wiesel was a man of great ambition, dreaming of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature.  He never received that prize, but he did receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication and work in areas of human rights around the world.  He said many times in many places that we must have a moral voice and may never stand silent. Yet, perhaps because he was a Holocaust survivor and a strong supporter of the state of Israel, he was not able to use his voice to be critical of it, as noted above.

Michael Berenbaum, who served for many years as the project director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, spoke at the screening and also figured prominently in the film. He spoke about Wiesel’s power to “transform victimization into witness”.   The title of the film—The Survivor in the Tuxedo—summarizes the irony inherent in Elie Wiesel’s “witness”. On the one hand, he was a survivor, with a strong message and constantly bearing witness to the Shoah. On the other hand, he became a celebrity in the USA and internationally, hobnobbing with presidents and kings, and ultimately receiving the Nobel Prize for peace. 

Wiesel was an important Jewish thinker and activist in contemporary history. He was a complex man, but one with a message and a method. His message was to remember the Shoah. His method was his writing and speaking. This excellent film helps us all understand a nuanced and complex view of this man.

The Survivor in a Tuxedo is a fantastic documentary film (71 minutes) and was made for broadcast on KAN Israeli TV by Fisher Features Ltd. 

 

A Touching Story of Holocaust Survivors

 I recently had the opportunity to see the film, Soda, directed by Erez Tadmor, which was made in 2024. Tadmor also made Strangers and A Matter of Size.

I had missed the film, Soda, but I am glad that I had the chance to see it.  It is very special.

About 1950s Israel, this is a story which takes place during the early years of the State, when people lived more modestly, and there were large groups of Holocaust survivors still trying to cope with the traumas of their not-so-distant past.

A group of survivors, who had been partisans in the forests of Europe, live together in a neighborhood outside of Tiberias and work in a soda bottling plant.  They have their own laws and system of justice.  Their leader is Shalom (played by Lior Raz who we all know from Fauda).  He lives with his wife who is frail and his daughter who was born in the forests.  They often listen to the radio broadcasts which provide the names and messages meant for survivors.

One day, Eva and her daughter move into the neighborhood.  She is an elegant lady, a seamstress, and sexual tension develops between her and Shalom.

Terrible stories are uncovered – for example, one man’s wife was shot while searching for food at a farm house.  Eva is suspected of having been a kapo in Auschwitz and her adolescent daughter being the result of her liaison with a German officer.  Everyone with their memories, traumas, searching for lost relatives.

This is a tender story of loss and love, based on a true story of the filmmaker’s grandparents. A story about a resistance fighter and his community trying to rebuild their lives.

Watch the trailer here --

 

Combining Humor with Holocaust Memory - a new film by Adir Miller

The Ring is a new film by Adir Miller, directed by Doron Paz, Yoav Paz and Adir Miller, inspired by true World War II stories, and written by Adir Miller. Miller is known to Israeli audiences as both a stand-up comedian and a film actor (especially in films by the famous Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher).

This is a semi-comic melodrama about a father-daughter relationship and also about Holocaust memory.

Arnon (played by Miller) is an observant Jew, making a living as a driving teacher.  He is estranged from his lesbian daughter, Alma, because he does not approve of her lifestyle. His mother, a survivor, would often go to high schools to tell the story of how she was saved by an Iron Cross Hungarian soldier. On the day of major deportations from Budapest, she was carrying her baby boy, running in the street.  When there was a diversion, she took the opportunity to rip off her yellow star and to disappear out of sight.  One enterprising Hungarian soldier followed her, but she begged for her life and the life of her baby, and gave him her gold ring, telling him that after the war it would be his proof that he saved a Jewish woman. Now, more than 50 years later, Arnon’s mother is very ill in the hospital, and he requests Alma’s assistance in traveling with him to Budapest to search for the ring that saved his mother so long ago.

So, they embark on a very special journey to Budapest. On their trip, they encounter a fair amount of anti-Semitism but they also discover people who are willing to help them.  It is a roller coaster ride from the point of view of their relationship.  As part of this journey down memory lane, we encounter many scenes of Holocaust events – a re-enactment of people being shot into the Danube River and leaving their shoes on the water’s edge, and a contemporary conference of people trying to confer status of Righteous Among the Nations on Hungarian heroes,

One of the qualities that makes this film unique is Miller’s use of humor, including black humor at times.  This helps the characters in the film – and us the viewers—deal with some of the very difficult issues that the film raises.

The film includes many sentimental scenes, including one in which Miller expounds on the importance of Holocaust remembrance for future generations. This is the message of the film – it is still vital to tell the stories of our people who perished in the Holocaust and to never forget them.

A Roots Trip to Poland Delivers More than One Might have Expected

The Property (הנכס), billed as a film by the Modan sisters -- a debut film by Dana Modan, based on the graphic novel (published in 2013) by her sister, Rutu Modan -- is currently playing in movie theaters in Israel.

This is a charming film about modern-day Israeli Jews and their relationship to contemporary Poland and Poles.  The story revolves around two women – an aging grandmother, Regina, memorably played by the famous veteran actress Rivka Michaeli, and her granddaughter, Mika – who make a trip to Warsaw.  (The film is almost entirely shot abroad, either in Poland or in Georgia.)

Back in the 1930s, Regina, then a 15-year-old pregnant girl, was forced by her parents to quickly marry a Jewish boy and leave Warsaw for Palestine. Obviously, this saved her life.  Now, for the first time, she is returning to Poland, not so much to confront or explore her Polish roots, but rather to seek out the local boy who was her lover so long ago. 

The story revolves around a family apartment where Regina and her family lived, before the war.  Today, she discovers, the apartment functions as a small restaurant. But among the tables and chairs, Regina finds much more than she anticipated.  Meanwhile, Mika is tracking down a lawyer who might be able to help them in their attempt to regain possession of the apartment.  Along the way, she is befriended by a non-Jewish tour-guide who specializes in tours of the Ghetto. 

There are plentiful references to the Holocaust, but there are no scenes of terrible trauma.  The Holocaust references are contemporary ones – the Israeli high school kids who are so poorly behaved on the airplane on their way to Poland where they will visit lots of concentration camps; issues of how post-war Poland deals with properties that belonged to Jews; and maybe the best scene of all – a non-Jewish woman whose work entails rebuilding Jewish and Holocaust memory for tourism who exclaims “I just love the ghetto!”

There are hints of a possible Polish-Jewish Israeli reconciliation—it was possible for a Pole and a Jew to be in love once, it is possible again, and maybe the Polish people and the Jewish people can somehow learn to live together.

The Property is a film that includes a bit of romance, some nostalgia, a lot of humor and an array of quirky characters. It is highly recommended! Available from Go2Films.

  

At the Jerusalem Film Festival -- New Film about the Execution of Adolph Eichmann

The Jerusalem Film Festival is in full swing, with tons of people attending every screening! 

The first Israeli film that I had the opportunity to see -- June Zero, directed by Jake Paltrow (an American-Israeli co-production) -- is an historical drama about memory. It takes place in Israel during the period leading up to the execution of Adolph Eichmann in 1962.  There are moral questions arising in Israeli society since this would be the first time that the State of Israel executes someone as a result of a lengthy trial.  Moreover, since no one wants Eichmann’s body to lie in a grave which could become a site for Nazi pilgrimage, there is much discussion and consternation concerning what to do with the body. 

During the Eichmann trial, Holocaust survivors in Israel began to tell their stories for the first time. As a result, this film deals with a serious dilemma which is still relevant today: are there negative aspects if stories of Holocaust survivors are told too much? Might this overwhelm us and foster a counter-productive narrative of victimhood? On the other hand, are we morally obliged to tell the stories so that people today recognize what actually happened in “that place” during “that time”, so that the history of this period is well known for this generation and for future ones? These questions – which are serious and sensitive ones—are raised in this film.

June Zero tells the story of a few key characters.  David is an adolescent boy whose father, a relatively new immigrant from Libya, takes his son to work at a factory, where he becomes invaluable because of his size (he can fit into small spaces) and because of his wit and creativity.  David becomes involved in the building of the oven that will cremate the body of Eichmann, so that his ashes may be scattered at sea.

It turns out that the building of the oven was not so easy.  It’s not as if expertise in the building of an oven for cremating a human body could be found in Israel.  Among other things, there was a serious question about how to get the temperature high enough so that the bones would burn to ashes.

This is also the story of the captain of the prison guards, who is tasked with the job of protecting Eichmann. He takes his job very seriously and must be sure that no harm will come to Eichmann, not by the hands of a survivor who might seek to take justice or revenge into his own hands, and not by the hands of Eichmann himself, who might want to deprive the State of Israel the opportunity to execute him. The prison captain must keep him safe so that no one is cheated out of the upcoming execution.

This is also the story of a young police interrogator who works for the prosecution, interviewing Eichmann.  He is himself a survivor of the ghetto and Auschwitz.  He visits Poland with one of the first delegations of visitors to Auschwitz, and finds meaning in the telling of his own heart-wrenching story of survival.

These characters and their stories are interwoven into a finely produced period piece which tries to portray the complexity of the times and the issues involved.  These issues continue to concern us in Israel today, as the history of the Holocaust, and the way the stories are told, are all too often used for narrow political purposes.

What is the meaning of the title of the film? In order to prevent the date of Eichmann’s execution from becoming memorialized, it was written in the Israeli press that the execution took place on June 0, 1962.

A Memorable Holocaust Documentary

With Yom HaShoah coming up next week, you might be interested in this fascinating piece of Holocaust history.  

The Return of the Violin, directed by Chaim Hecht, a veteran Israeli journalist and documentary filmmaker, is a riveting and superb Holocaust documentary about a violin, a Polish American wealthy businessman, the history of the Jews of Czestochowa (a city in southern Poland which was made up of 40% Jews before World War II), the establishment of the Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1930s in what was then called Palestine, and the rebuilding of Jewish culture in contemporary Poland.  The film tells the story of an 18^th century Stradivarius violin which was once owned by Bronislaw Huberman, founder of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and was later purchased by American virtuoso, Joshua Bell, one of the greatest Jewish violinists of our time.  Combining seemingly disparate elements, it includes intrigue, personal Holocaust stories, and wonderful music, which is interweaved beautifully throughout the film.

The hero of the film is a remarkable man named Sigmund Rolat who hid as a child in Czestochowa during the Holocaust, witnessed terrible tragedies and lost all of his family, and eventually escaped Poland and found his way as a refugee to America where he became a very successful businessman.  After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe, he and others go back to visit and to help rebuild Poland, by establishing memorials to their beloved family members who did not survive, by supporting local Polish culture (such as the local university), and by re-establishing Jewish culture in many places in Poland, including the now famous Jewish Cultural Festival in Crakow.

In addition to Rolat, the film director, Chaim Hecht, also has a very special relationship to Czestochowa. His grandmother grew up there.   Along with Jewish descendants from this once thriving Jewish town who now live all over the world, Rolat and other Jewish philanthropists have established the Jewish Museum of Czestochowa in this city, to honor the memory of their ancestors and to be a permanent place of remembrance of Jewish culture in that city.

On the site where the magnificent grand synagogue of Czestochowa once stood (it was burnt down by the Nazis), the government of Poland built a concert hall.  In an act of daring and brilliance, Rolat came up with an idea to produce a concert in that hall, in memory of the Jews of Czestochowa and in honor of Bronislaw Huberman who single-handedly brought 800 Jews – the leading musicians of Europe and their families – to pre-state Israel to create a world-class philharmonic orchestra, which has become the internationally renowned Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert featured Joshua Bell, playing Braham’s famous violin concerto, using Huberman’s Stradivarius.  Rolat was there, as were other Jewish philanthropists whom my husband and I know—Carol and Alan Silberstein—whom we saw sitting in the second row behind Rolat, reveling in this marvelous experience.

It is a stirring event, one which you will not forget for a long time!

This is one of the best Holocaust documentaries that I have seen in a long time!  You can watch The Return of the Violin (documentary, 2012) on the internet. 

 

 

Keeping the Memory Alive

 Yom HaShoah always comes a week after Pesach – it’s April 8 this year.  So, I thought I would take this opportunity to review a Shoah documentary that I had the occasion to see just lately. It’s not a new film, but it’s particularly touching and it makes an important statement about Holocaust education, which is all too often just ceremonial and lacking in meaning.

 The Strength to Tell, directed by Noam Demsky, tells the story of a drama therapy program for youth at risk in Jerusalem.  These youngsters know very little about the Shoah, and have no personal relationship to it.  As part of a workshop run by the Jerusalem theater group, HaMartef, they are given the opportunity to meet with five Holocaust survivors, all of whom testified at the Eichmann Trial, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961.  After they view each survivor’s testimony, they have small group meetings with him, and then they do theater exercises to develop their own expression towards the stories that the survivors shared with them. 

One story is told by Avraham Avriel – his mother and brother were killed at an open ravine in the Ukraine and he succeeded in running away, haunted until this day, by the memories of his mother and brother who he left behind in the pit.  We watch the footage of his testimony at the Eichmann Trial and then we see the touching encounter with the youth participating in the program.

Yosef Kleinman talks about his experiences at Auschwitz.  Yehuda Bacon talks about the difficulty he had because you become insensitive to the evil taking place around you.  Nahum Hoch was locked inside the gas chamber with all the tension and the crying.  And then, suddenly, they took them out to do another selectia.  He is convinced that he was brought back to tell the story of what happened there. 

 We watch as the young actors are amazingly impacted by the people they meet.  They take the material they hear, struggle to build their own relationship to the Shoah and create a theatrical story around it. 

 The Strength to Tell (documentary, 2013, 50 minutes) is a moving and innovative film which shows how the Shoah can still be meaningful to young people, even so many years after it occurred.  The film can be obtained directly from the director, Noam Demsky, at demskynoam@gmail.com.

 

Identity Theft

You Only Die Twice, a film by David Deri and, Yair Lev, is a compelling historical and personal mystery.  The filmmaker, a second generation survivor, sets out on a journey to solve a family mystery.  

When the filmmaker's mother inherits a cottage in an upscale neighborhood of London, she has to prove who she is and how she is related to the deceased.  The lawyer dealing with the case discovers something unsettling in her father's records.  Ernst Bechinsky, her father, lived in Palestine since the 1930s and died there.  But the lawyer has discovered a second death certificate from the 1980s for a man living in Austria, with the same name and the identical date of birth.  How could this be? 

The filmmaker, Yair Lev, travels to Innsbruck to discover who was this imposter who took his grandfather's identity and why would someone steal another's identity? 

The story slowly unfolds as the filmmaker interviews people who might have known the second Ernst Bechinsky, as he reconstructs the past, and considers what might have motivated this man. He discovers a close connection to an Austrian Nazi family and builds a surprising bond with the grandson of this family – a man his own age, a man also grappling with living in the shadow of that time.  This is a film about victims and perpetrators and living with the burden of the past, about identity and about shattering our own assumptions.    

The film won an award at DocAviv 2018 – the jury's comments: "Research is the heart and soul of this film, a film where the director works as investigator, uncovering a personal mystery to reveal a profound truth about family, brotherhood and forgiveness."

You Only Die Twice (documentary, 88 minutes) is available from JMT Films.

A Family Drama

Antenna by Arik Rothstein is a compelling family drama which mixes comedy, family relations, and tragedy.  All mixed in one. 

Combining issues dealing with Holocaust memory, divorce, family loyalty, relations with the neighbors, illness, and intermarriage, the film tells the story of one typical Jewish Israeli family -- elderly parents and their three grown sons. 

The parents live in a two-family house, and the father discovers that his neighbor has rented out his part of the roof to a cellphone company for the installation of an antenna.  Believing that the radiation from the antenna is the cause of all of his aches and pains, the father develops an obsession with the antenna and begins to wage a war against his neighbor. 

His three sons and their partners – all portrayed in a complex manner and all very different from each other -- become involved in the struggle against the antenna -- Itzik, a career army officer, is married with three kids; Leon, divorced, teaches Holocaust literature at the university; and Effi, involved with a non-Jewish woman from Germany, is dealing and smoking grass.

The subject of the antenna might make you think that this film borders on the absurd.  Rather, it is a serious and authentic story about a family and the cellular antenna represents more than just a neighbor’s greed – the father is a Holocaust survivor and we begin to see that his paranoia is due to shadows from his past.

Contact Transfax Films for distribution information.

Past Life by Avi Nesher

Last night, I had the honor of seeing one more Israeli film which just opened here in Jerusalem – Past Life by Avi Nesher – and it is the most compelling and serious Israeli film that I have seen in a long time.

Avi Nesher makes great films.  He is known for his earlier films – Dizengoff ’99 and Sing Your Heart Out – and for his later films – Turn Left at the End of the World, Secrets, and Wonders. 

His newest film, Past Life (Hebrew title: החטאים ), tells the story of two sisters in 1977 Israel who learn about their father’s complicated and problematic past during the Holocaust.  It is also about the blurring of moral choices in time of war.  The script is based on the true story of Ella Sheriff, wife of Noam Sheriff (the Israeli world-renowned conductor/musician/composter).

 

According to a radio interview with Avi Nesher last Friday, he chose to have the film take place in 1977 because this was a year of upheaval in Israeli society.  There were the political changes of the revolutionary election of the Likud to power as well as the historic visit of Egyptian President Sadat to Jerusalem, which led to the groundbreaking peace agreement with Egypt.  This was also the end of the period of the “generals”, a macho period in which the leadership of the Israel Defense Forces  thought that they had answers to everything, but in fact their conventional understanding of the enemy was mistaken, which led to the debacle of the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.  The fact that   everything got turned upside down in so many different ways is clearly reflected in this relevant film, especially because this is the story of two very strong women.

Ella Sheriff, like her husband, is a musician/composer.  Interviewed on the same talk radio program as Avi Nesher, she said that as a result of participating in this project, she felt that she was being pushed to finally grapple with her story.  She said that before she saw the film, she couldn’t believe that this would be a true telling of her family’s story.  But now, having viewed it, she realized how much Avi Nesher caught the depths of who she is and the important aspects of her story. 

The narrative of the film is about two sisters -- Sephie is learning music at the Academy of Music in Jerusalem, and Nana, who is older, is married and co-publishing a provocative intellectual magazine together with her husband.  At a choral performance in Berlin, an older woman shouts at Sephie that her father was a murderer.  Clearly shaken by this outburst, she undertakes a journey, together with her sister, trying to discover who her father really was and what happened to him during the war. 

This is not just another Holocaust film.  It is a deeply compelling look at some of the extremely difficult moral choices people were forced to take, and how those choices impact on their lives 30 years later. 

The film is also like a concert, showcasing extraordinary choral music and concluding with a triumphant, even cathartic, concert performed back in Berlin. 

Past Life, which opened at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, is probably Avi Nesher’s best film yet.  Don’t miss it!

A Touching Story

Ewa, directed by Haim Tabakman, is a period piece. 

The story takes places in 1972 Israel in a rural setting.  It is the touching portrayal of Ewa and Yoel, who have already been married for a long time and have a grown daughter.  A Holocaust survivor, Ewa is a mysterious and lovely woman.  One day, Yoel learns that his wife has purchased an apartment in a nearby apartment complex where she is housing another man.  As a result of this discovery, their lives take a dramatic and surprising change of direction. 

This is a slow paced yet touching love story, which brings to the fore one of the heartfelt problems encountered by Holocaust survivors after their arrival in Israel.

Ewa is the second feature film by Haim Tabakman, who is well-known for his first feature, Eyes Wide Open. The film (88 minutes) is available from Go2Films.  

A Story of Heroism during the Shoah

During the last 20 years, we have seen many films of Holocaust survivors taking their families to learn about their roots in Europe, reminiscing and talking about their growing up and telling stories of their survival.  This one is especially compelling and historically fascinating, produced with graphics and tremendous research, telling a personal story that is different from other stories.  This is a tale of two sisters who were deported to Auschwitz very late in the war -- and lived to tell the tale.

A Story in the Third Person, directed by Yarden Karmin, relates the story of a Slovakian woman named Zuzi, now 86-years-old, who returns to the town where she grew up, together with her Israeli family.  She talks of the importance of "memories" and tells the story of how, together with her older sister, Agi, she survived the dark years of the Holocaust. 

They lived in a town called Kosice which was annexed by Hungary in 1938.  The family name was Weisz -- father, mother, and two daughters named Agi and Zuzi.  They had an idyllic childhood and there are beautiful family photos, especially a striking one of the two teenage sisters in 1943, on the eve of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry.  

The Jews of the town were first placed in a ghetto and later deported to Birkenau.  From Birkenau, Zuzi, together with her mother and her sister, was transported north to Estonia and then sent on a death march to Latvia.  Their mother was murdered by the Nazis during this march.  Zuzi was only 17-years-old at the time, but she was capable of so much bravery in order to save her sister who was sick with typhus near the end of the war.  After 19 months of terrible suffering and agony, there is the closing of the circle and they finally return home to their family's apartment in Kosice.

This is a family story of wonderful memories, a tale of tremendous bravery, a story told by a woman looking back on her life.  Surrounded by her family, Zuzi relates the details of her story in a matter-of-fact way which I found strangely compelling.  She  explains that she tells the story with objective distance, "in the third person", as if it were the story of someone else.  This is her coping mechanism. 

The film, in Hebrew and Slovak with English subtitles, was produced by Elishava Braun-Lapidot, Zuzi's adult daughter.  A Story in the Third Person (documentary, 74 minutes), is available from Ruth Diskin films.

Firebirds by Amir Wolf

Israeli filmgoers know that living in the shadow of the Holocaust is still an important subject within Israeli society.  The latest Israeli feature film to open in Israeli cinemas, Firebirds, directed by Amir Wolf, is a murder mystery, dealing with Holocaust survivors.   (The erroneous English title being used in Israeli newspapers is Sandbirds.)  

The film opens with an unidentified body found stabbed, partially submerged in the Yarkon River in north Tel Aviv.  The victim has a number on his arm.  A police detective who has been in disgrace is called back to the force and assigned to this case. The story moves back and forth between past and present as the detective discovers clues that help him identify the man and eventually the killer.  We slowly discover that despite his age, this man was still good looking and charming and exploiting Holocaust survivor widows, taking advantage of their loneliness, telling  fabricated stories from the past, building on their neediness and taking their money. 

The pacing is a bit slow and even stilted for a crime drama.  Perhaps the film should have been billed as a psychological drama.  As the detective, who is himself the child of survivors, discovers that the tattooed number on the arm of the victim is relatively new, we ask ourselves, what would make anyone tattoo a number on his arm, faking his identity as a Holocaust survivor?  

This is an intriguing story told on the background of the Holocaust, about aging survivors living in Tel Aviv today.  According to an interview with the filmmaker, Amir Wolf, on Reshet Bet Radio, the film began from this simple story, on the background of the Holocaust, and moved from there to a homage to the three women playing the survivors in the film.  The three women are Gila Almagor, Miriam Zohar and Devorah Keidar and the main character is played by Oded Teomi.  

Firebirds is available from Israeli Films.

The State vs. the Individual

In 1943, approximately 875 Holocaust orphans were brought to the state-in-the-making from Poland via Teheran.  Referred to as the "Teheran children", they were quickly absorbed into the country and were an integral part of the founding generation.

Decades later, when they discover that the State of Israel has received reparations from Germany on their behalf, a small group of them decide to sue the government of Israel for what they consider to be their rightful share of the reparations. 

In the documentary film, The Last Battle of the "Teheran Children" directed by Talila Frank, a group of elderly survivors come together concerning their legal case, and they find some consolation in their common cause.   

On the one hand, these people are very connected to the State.  They were part of the generation of founders and fought in the War of Independence.  Even though they say difficult things about the government and the State of Israel, they are patriotic and some of them ironically talk about how they want the emblem of the Palmach to be put on their gravestones. 

Filmmaker Talila Frank, in a discussion last night at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, talked about how she worked on the film over a period of 8 years.  Her personal connection to the story is that the father of her brother-in-law is a Teheran Child who never talked about his experiences until lately.  He is featured in the film.  Frank talked about the anger of these "children" and how she identifies with their pain because they were not taken care of by the state.  She went on to talk about how these people feel abandoned by the state and therefore are experiencing a feeling of being orphaned again. 

The film raises many issues concerning the life of the individual within the state.  It cannot be denied that the State of Israel did not treat Holocaust survivors in an exemplary fashion over the years.  In fact, one of the judges in the case shown in the film talks about how this case could be dangerous for the government because it could be seen as a precedent and if there is a judgment in favor of these survivors, it could open a deluge of claims by other survivors against the state. 

During the discussion last night, one person in the audience spoke eloquently in favor of the choices made by the growing and developing state in its early years.  It is clear that the state needed the reparations money received from the German government to build its military capability, to build homes and schools, and to invest in a thriving economy.  On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there is much poverty, even until today, and that not enough has been done to give honor and to cover the basic needs of so many Holocaust survivors. 

The Last Battle of the Teheran Children (documentary, 57 minutes) is available from Maya Weinberg (mayafilmfest@gmail.com).