Holocaust Education Resources Council Newsletter March 2016 Board of Directors Dear HERC Friends, John Rosner President First I want to thank all the donors his facial expressions really captured the emotional and volunteers that have helped HERC in response to the situation as well as his absolute Rita Blank Vice President the past years. So many people have single mindedness in seeing that the young helped make a difference in our Hungarian boy received a proper burial. In the Tasha Weinstein community. The transformative work of midst of such draconian evil, Saul's humanity was Secretary HERC could not be achieved without not deterred." David Kirk people like you. With your support, HERC Everyone is invited on May 5th for Treasurer is teaching the next generation lessons Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah, from history to Never Forget. HERC with a meaningful commemoration program at Monte Finkelstein continues to work tirelessly to develop Congregation Shomrei Torah at 7pm. HERC Education Director new programs and expand our efforts This newsletter is dedicated to the through the Big Bend Area. With our memory of Rachel Capelouto, mother of At-Large Members guideline for the next year, HERC's vision Raymond and Grant. The Capelouto Family is unprecedented and changing the has been a longtime supporter of HERC. Linda Davey roadmap of Holocaust education. If you have already donated to HERC's Eileen Lerner The Academy Award Winner Film, membership, thank you kindly. If you have Robyn Rachin Shari Gewanter SON OF SAUL, should be seen by not, please use the form included now for your Donna Callaway everyone. It is based on the book We tax-deductible donation, and help us continue Michelle Gayle Wept without Tears by Holocaust historian our work to educate and remember. Mary Ann Deitchman Gideon Greif. According to Mary Ann Lynda Kinard Avi Wygodski Deitchman, HERC Board member, "It was Barbara Daniela Wellner absolutely brilliant and one of the most Goldstein psychologically compelling movies I have Executive Director ever seen. Its brilliance was its immediacy and the sense that you were in Saul's head the whole time. You could not escape nor could he. Saul's meta communication via Inside this Edition... H E RC Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org 1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee Italy & The Holocaust: Place of Hope H E 2 RC Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee HERC Book Club – A Thread of Grace H E 3 RC Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee I SAW IT IN THE MOVIES! H E 4 RC Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee Coming in 2016: I SAW IT IN THE MOVIES! What did Americans know about the racism and horrors of the NAZI threat before and during WWII? In search of the answer, HERC invites you to look at the social media of the day – the movies. While Nazi tyranny was widely written about in the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the time and reported on the radio, thousands of moviegoers received their current events education from the movies they saw. The second year of HERC's film series will present four movies which portray Nazi racism and oppression of dissent. All of the movies are presented for free to you by HERC and will be shown at 7:00 PM at the All Saint's Cinema at 918 1/2 Railroad Avenue. The selections for 2016 are: Tuesday March 22, 2016 Thursday April 28, 2016 Released by 20th Century Fox in June 1941, "Man In 1941, Gregor Ziemer wrote a bestselling book called Hunt" was based on a popular novel by Geoffrey Education for Death. As a former head of the American Household entitled Rogue Male. The movie was Colony School in Berlin, he had seen firsthand the directed by Fritz Lang who fled Germany in 1933 rather Nazification of youth from infants through teens in the than accept a commission from Goebbels to produce Nazi education system. His stark conclusion was that all Nazi propaganda films. The story is about a hunter, boys were trained to become the Fuhrer's soldiers, seeing Alan, who imagines shooting Hitler near his death as an honor. The girls were trained to be breeders Berchtesgaden compound. Needless to say, the Nazis do of children for the Fuhrer. Anyone who did not conform not take this stalking lightly, and the hunter becomes the to these proscriptions or fit the racial purity ideology of hunted. The Nazis brutally attempt to make Alan an the Nazis would be eliminated from German society. international scapegoat and he is ruthlessly hounded by The 1943 RKO film, "Hitler's Children" dramatizes his merciless pursuers back to his native England. Lang these facts in a haunting love story in which freedom is tells the story with unremitting intensity. pitted against the Master Race, and cries out for truth. H E Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org 5 RC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee Regional Holocaust Education Conference - June 13 & 14 H E Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org 6 RC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee “Son of Saul” Article: The Times of Isreal, by Jessica Steinberg When Holocaust historian Gideon Greif heard that about the Sonderkommandos. Greif told him it was a good Hungarian film "Son of Saul" had won the Oscar for Best idea. Foreign Film, he was surprised but pleased. As part of popular culture, movies, said Greif, can "I had naively thought that the film industry is less be useful in helping people to better understand the in favor of dealing with the Holocaust, and this film really Holocaust. Not every film, however. He pointed to the looks at the core of the Holocaust, at its most complicated 2001 film "The Grey Zone," also about the chapter," said Greif. Sonderkommandos, which he felt gave a "very distorted The film, from Hungarian Jewish director László impression, showing them as corrupt," a description that Nemes, is about the Sonderkommandos, the Jews who he said wasn't factual. were charged with disposing of the corpses of their fellow Nemes, by contrast, created a story that seems Jews after they were killed in the gas chambers. Its story impossible, but was completely authentic. "He really is about one Sonderkommando, Saul, played by first-time followed my instructions," Greif said. actor and native Hungarian Géza Röhrig. Greif was also impressed with lead actor Röhrig, It was Greif, currently the chief historian at Shem who he calls "one of the most intelligent people he's ever Olam, the Faith and the Holocaust Institute for Education, met. He's so wise." Documentation and Research in Israel, whose dogged Greif's book about the Sonderkommandos is now research initially uncovered much of the history of the being translated into Hungarian, after a dozen Hungarian Sonderkommandos. His book, "We Wept without Tears… publishers contacted him following the release of the film. the Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando in He said it's gratifying to be receiving all this attention, Auschwitz," was the result of 13 years of research that even after so many years. began in the late 1980s. "It's a big achievement," he said. "Most of the At the time, 31 Sonderkommandos were still alive, people I interviewed aren't alive anymore." and until then, "no one thought it was important to But he will continue to write books and articles interview them," he told The Times of Israel. "I nominated about the topic because it's so important, said Greif. myself. People were reluctant to speak out, and I It's also part of his own history. persuaded them that it was important." Following the November 1938 Kristallnacht, or He calls the research "a diamond of history." Night of Broken Glass, Greif's grandfather was There are currently only two Sonderkommandos imprisoned in Buchenwald, one of the first concentration still alive, both in the US, and Greif is in regular contact camps, but was released five months later and emigrated with both of their families. to Israel in 1939. “I'm still writing books and articles about this "He survived the Holocaust but emotionally he topic because it's so central and so important," he said. never left Buchenwald," said Greif. "He used to scream "One fact that people really can't understand is how can a every night. He never told the story but that was his person be surrounded by corpses for days and sometimes story." years? It's impossible, incredible. And those that did Greif's great-aunt stayed in Germany to care for survive were able to because of a strong desire to tell the her mother, and was deported to Auschwitz where she was world. They wanted to bear witness." killed. Greif, who currently lectures widely around "I felt very attached to Jewish history and the Germany about the Holocaust and has addressed 200,000 Holocaust conquered me," he said. "Now I'm enslaved to Germans at his last count, was contacted by "Son of Saul" it and I do not complain. It's the mission of my life." director Nemes about two years ago. When they met in Tel Aviv, Nemes told Greif he wanted to make a movie H E Holocaust Education Resource Council | P.O.Box 16282 Tall., FL 32317 | holocaustresources.org 7 RC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HERCTallahassee Sam Willenberg – by Monique O.