Rex Bloomstein
Film Screening in Advance of Holocaust Memorial Day: The Gathering, by Rex Bloomstein

Rex Bloomstein - The Gathering, Film Showing in Advance of Holocaust Memorial Day

- Well, hello, everybody. Thank you for joining me, and I shall be showing my film “The Gathering.” And I’d like to introduce that in a minute, but just to say that my thanks to Emily who’s looking after us technically, and also that Trudy Gold will be joining me after the film is shown to answer any questions you may have. So, it will be great to have Trudy do that. So if I may, I would like to introduce “The Gathering.” Virtually all documentaries on the Holocaust include survivors. Their testimonies have added a unique perspective on life and death in the camps. They provided us with glimpses of such barbarity as to make us question the very limits of language, the possibility or impossibility of conveying not only what happened, but in turn challenging our ability to comprehend the scale of human depravity. They’re our witness to a universe almost beyond human belief and understanding. In 1981, I learned about an event that was being organised called The World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem. Thousands of survivors were coming from different countries to celebrate what the organisers described as survival and redemption. The media had been invited, the intention that the world should know about this. A number of news camera teams and presenters arrived, as I did, hoping to film the drama of what was undoubtedly a remarkable occasion, hoping to do that media thing of being there when survivors met each other, met other survivors, when relatives met relatives, when those that had survived could express their joy and tears.

The sheer size and number of people that eventually turned up must have made it quite unique. The organisers created a database, provided a whole wall of the auditorium for people to pin notices, asking if any of their fellow survivors knew of their mothers, their fathers, their aunts, uncles, the children who never came back, their friends from different camps. They held placards with the names of the camps they’d been in. You will hear them speak of their shared relief at survival. You will also hear their immense sadness. Those who had come were there to talk, to share, to cry. They couldn’t help express a profound sense of loss and desperation. In this film, I decided against commentary to let the event speak for itself, as it were, and intercut the actuality of the gathering with studied interviews with other survivors, some who’d also appeared in “Auschwitz and the Allies,” a two-hour documentary that I had produced and that was shown in the same week on the BBC in 1982, and which I hope to show on Lockdown later in the year. “The Gathering” begins with a long interview with Jona Malleyron and ends with her. As you will see, the story she tells reminds us of the importance of such narratives and the importance that others listen to them, the different generations listen to them, and make the effort to understand the enormity of what happened. So, here is “The Gathering.”

FILM BEGINS

• Nothing happened to us at the beginning ‘cause my father could go back to work. He was a senior civil servant. And though we were restricted in a way, in that we had to wear the yellow star and couldn’t go out, except shopping between eight and 10 o'clock in the morning. We, as far as I remember, didn’t think much of it, and my father in particular thought that no harm would come to us. And even when later on in August, September, rumour had it that a ghetto was being established in the city, my father said, “No, but they won’t take us.” And indeed, the street in which we lived was the last to be moved into the ghetto. But the day came. It was the 11th of October 1941 when we had to leave our home and move into the ghetto, and we did. We stayed there for three days. After three days, we were driven out of that house and told that we would have to be sent to another place, resettled. And my father believed that. We were made to stand in the street for a whole day and then sent back into the houses, then driven out again, and taken to the railway station. There we were told that we would have to enter the cattle train that was waiting for us. 51 persons per car. People were dying. My father was the first. He died a few days after our arrival. My mother was unconscious. My grandmother was lying on the floor, and I was trying to take her shoes off, but her feet were so swollen that I pulled and pulled and pulled and I couldn’t make it. And that particular instance, she said to me, “You’re young. "You’ll survive. "Don’t forget who you are.” And the following morning, she was dead. My mother remained unconscious for 17 days, and then she died. They were all taken away after a few days and thrown into mass graves. My sister and I were left behind. The first year was very hard because there was no food, just potato peels or one potato a day. It got better after a year. My sister went out to work. We were, started out being 40 people in that hut.

There were 12 of us left. And I spent two and a half years in that hut, until one day the rumours spread that for some reason the orphans under the age of 15 were being taken out from the camps. I was on that list. I arrived in Bucharest on the 4th of April 1944, the day it was bombed by the Allies. I found a relative. He took me in, and I spent three months there again being fed and clothed and spoiled to some extent. But that relative who had been on his way to Palestine in 1939 still had the certificate to go to Palestine. He still had a valid passport. And there were three birds in 1944 that left from Constanta to Palestine. He managed to get onto one of these birds called Cosbeck. I thought he would leave me behind, but he didn’t. He adopted me. So I changed my name again, and I arrived in Palestine in July 1944 as his adopted daughter. I had thought that this was going to be my haven of refuge, that this was going to be the place where I would be able to start some kind of life again, but I was made to feel a liar. When I told them about the death march, when I told them about the camp, when I told them about starvation, when I told them about shootings, beatings, mass graves, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making up things just to get my way, that way to go to school. They talked of sending me to a doctor. They didn’t, in the end. For three months, I kept trying to tell them what had happened. I kept trying to tell my brother what had happened to our parents and that my sister was still in the camp, but he didn’t believe me. They finally told me to stop talking about it 'cause people didn’t want to hear such horror stories. So I stopped.

• Friends, this is a very emotional moment for all of us. On behalf of my vice chairman Ben Meed and the members of our executive committee, we want to welcome you to this first official opening of the Survivor Village at the . Today is the culmination of a dream that we’ve had for many, many years, and you see the number of you who are here with us. This is only the beginning. There are four to 5,000 of us here in Israel coming from 23 countries. This has been the work of many years by all of us from throughout the world, and we hope that you and I together will enjoy these four days as a celebration of life and as a celebration of our survival.

• [Speaker] This is a world gathering of the Jewish Holocaust survivors, and the Holocaust reminds everybody today of the big Jewish tragedy on one hand and of two important words related to the Holocaust, survival and redemption.

• No, no, from the same town.

• Do you know each other? Do you remember his face now?

• [Man] I know his brother.

• My younger brother was his friend.

• You two talk to each other. Don’t talk to me.

• Which country? Which country are you?

• Israel.

• Before, before Israel, before Israel.

• But before?

• Before, no, America.

• Ah, America. And before America?

• [Woman] Czechoslovakia.

• Where from? Shican Encarta was my brother-in-law. They took him away in five minutes.

• [Woman] Before, before, before.

• I was 14 years of age.

• [Interviewer] And how many camps were you in?

• I was in the ghetto. I was in Auschwitz. I was in Dachau. I was.

• He had enough.

• [Interviewer] He had enough.

• We all had enough.

• Auschwitz, which is a symbol of the Holocaust, I could say is the whole Holocaust, brought always out either the best or the worst in everybody. It brought out the worst in most of us, yes. Some of us who never dreamt of being heroes or heroines all of a sudden had to force the power to remain human beings and not to lose their humanity, but mostly, mostly there was not much heroism. We could have done much more.

• [Interviewer] In what way?

• If everybody really would have tried his level best, he’s very level best, and if everybody wouldn’t have been too concerned about his or her own survival. When I was taken into the office, the SS man who took me in said to me, “Three typing errors a day, and you go through the chimney.” To work under that pressure was terrible. We were writing from six in the morning 'til about midnight. We had to write death. At that time I was writing death certificates with seven copies. Now no three mistakes allowed, and these were all names, Polish names, gypsy names, names I even couldn’t very well spell. And I knew not more than three errors allowed. My husband was put to death on August 17th, '42, and even though I was at that time already working in the political department registry office, my friends misled me. They left his filing card in instead of taking it out after his death. So that when I came to check every week, even though I was not allowed to check, but they knew I would check, I always found his card. So, I thought that he was still alive, but I somehow felt that something was not all right. And in '43, about a year later, when some new girls came into the work allocation office, I did not tell them that it was my husband. I just gave them the name. I just gave them the number, and I said, “Please look up who that, where that man works.” They did not know it was my husband. And in the evening, just when we were going for roll call, they said, “Oh, you must have given us the wrong number. "That number died in '42.” And at that precise moment we had roll call, and I could not even cry, could not. My friend saw that I was just, something was filling me up, and she gave me a push, and I fell down. That saved my life.

Otherwise I would’ve probably started to cry or yell or something. She saved me by just pushing me. And then all my friends stayed with me the whole night because they knew that that night I wanted to commit suicide. But they didn’t leave me alone for a single minute, and when you survive one night, when you survive 24 hours, that is it. Life goes on. One day the chief of the print shop came and said, “Well, you have been good enough "to work for years in the political department. "I take all of you.” When we arrived the first day at his office, he singled me out and took me to a big room, and said, “Can you make order here?” I looked around. It was a mess. All papers, everything was all rolled up. It was all. I said, “Of course I can make order.” He said, “Take your time, nothing wrong. "Take your time.” And then he left. He always behaved like a gentleman. And I really thought, what does a gentleman do in the SS uniform? How come? He had told me only one thing is not permitted for me and that is to open that one door. Now, I didn’t know what was behind it. One day I heard terrible cries. I still hear them in my ears. It is as if an animal would be deadly hurt. It was, the cries I cannot describe. It was terrible. I just forgot where I am, what I am. I didn’t think at all. And I opened the door, and I heard that the screams were coming from there. I saw steps. I went down the steps. And when I was about in the middle, I stopped, and I saw about a hundred Polish Jews working there. And my gentleman boss was standing there with a belt in his hand, really bludgeoning a man to death. I couldn’t understand it, but later on I heard that this was his pleasure to at least once or twice even a week beating some worker to death with his belt. The men all looked up. They thought an angel from heaven comes down. They hadn’t known that women are working upstairs, and I hadn’t known that men are working downstairs. When my boss saw that the men all are wrapped like in an ecstasy, looked up there, he turned around, what’s going on? And he saw me standing there, and he came up and very low so that the man couldn’t hear us, said to me, “Go back.” And instead of going back, which I somehow felt I should do, but I didn’t do, I grabbed his sleeve, the sleeve of his SS uniform.

And I don’t know why I did it. I have no idea why I did it, what made me do it. I’m not a heroine, and I don’t know where I took the force from, but I held onto this sleeve like for dear life and looked into his eyes. I don’t know how long it was. It may have been half a minute. It may have been only seconds. For me, it was eternity. And after a long time he said to me, “Take your hands off my sleeve.” And I didn’t answer. I just held onto dear life. And then after what seemed again eternity to me, he broke down, and he laughed and said, “It’s all right. "Go on, go back.” And I still didn’t go. And then he said, “I won’t beat anymore.” And then I let go and went back. Without looking back, I went into my room. I heard later on that from this moment on, he never, never again touched a man. The day before we went on the death march, this Polish-Jewish man sent me high boots, and they wrote me a slip that this is to tell me thank you, that none of them was beaten anymore. And with these high boots, of course, they saved my life on the death march because I was on the death march without stockings, without a coat. But these high boots saved me.

• Could I say something? Where, to you? My name is Ada Kovojanksa from Warsaw, Poland. I live in New York and Florida. Please get in touch with me. I stay in Hotel King David. Ada Finegold. Please contact me.

• [Man] My parents was taken away to Treblinka. I’m the only survivor, but I am alone by myself.

• [Woman] We do not consider ourselves as human beings. We did not consider us ourselves as women.

• [Woman] Dr. Mangela, he pulls me out and says, “Come here.”

• [Man] Three of my sisters lose their babies.

• [Woman] People walked around like in a daze.

• [Man] Distant relatives like uncles and aunts and cousins.

• [Man] My father, my mother, I dunno, must be Auschwitz.

• [Woman] We came to Bergen-Belsen, and that’s what finished us.

• [Man] I lost my brothers, three brothers.

• [Woman] I am looking for my whole family.

• [Woman] I went right. They went left.

• [Man] The family hasn’t got no grave. We haven’t got where to go even to say a prayer.

• [Woman] I was there like in a dream.

• [Woman] We lost so much, so many girls that I knew, and I lost my whole family. I had only one sister left from seven people.

• [Man] I lost my father.

• [Woman] I was only 14 years old then.

• [Woman] We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.

• [Woman] And I saw them even building the crematorium.

• [Woman] We never saw her again.

• [Woman] We didn’t believe that it would be for us.

• [Woman] When you see that smoke in the sky, that when you were raw.

• [Woman] I lost my father, two sisters, and one brother, my aunts and uncles, my mother.

• One day, I gave birth. In the barracks, there were stone stoves. A Polish prisoner, a midwife, put me down. She was praying the Rosencrantz and helped me to give birth. A beautiful baby, girl baby. No cotton, no diapers, no blankets, no soap, no hot water, nothing was here. No hygenic part, nothing. Mengele came in the morning, as each day he visited me. He saw I gave birth, and he gave the order to wind up my breasts so I can’t feed my baby. He wanted to make a research how long a newborn can live without food. When I got my soup or my coffee and my little piece of bread, I took it first the bread in my mouth. A co-inmate gave me a little piece of linen. I put the bread into the coffee or into the soup, and I gave it to my little girl because she was crying. It was awful crying. She was hungry. The milk got up. I got high fever. Every day Mengele came and started to measure the body to look at the little body, which was going thinner and thinner and got already, and afterwards, thicker and thicker because it was edemus of hunger. And the little girl had no, no more strengths to cry. And I was laying in my own blood. The baby and that endured, that was, that was something awful. I can’t describe. The aides, they. Mengele came and told tomorrow morning, “You be prepared with the child. "I’m coming to fetch you.” And I asked him where to. And again, his cynical words, “You will see.” And I have known it’s my last day, that I’m going into the gas chambers, but I didn’t want it to live. It was a pathetic life. I didn’t want it to live anymore because I wanted to get rid of this whole suffering. In comes a Czech woman doctor, a prisoner, Matta.

And she asked me, “What’s going on? "Why are you crying?” And I told her, “Tomorrow I’m going to die. "I will not live anymore.” And she has already heard that I returned from Hamburg to Auschwitz, and she told, “I must save your life.” At nine o'clock the lights went off and in she came with a syringe in her hand. And I, she told me, “Give this to your child.” I told, “What’s in?” And she told me, “It’s morphine.” And I told her, “What do you think, "I can be the killer of my child?” And she told me, “Look here, you are young. "I must save your life. "And I made an oath of Hippocrates, and I have to save you. "The child is not able to live anymore.” It took her for nearly one or two hours, I don’t know, I lost a feeling of time, to persuade me to give a morphine injection to my own child to kill my child. The child was dying. It was awful to see. In the morning, they collected corpses in Auschwitz. Each morning, there were each morning heaps of corpses. They took my little girl away. Mengele came to fetch me. I was ready to go with him. I didn’t want it to live anymore. He asked me, “Where’s your child?” And I told him, “This night it died.” He ran out to look for the child. Couldn’t find his little corpse in this heap of corpses. He came back to me and told me, “You know, you had luck with the next transport "you leaving Auschwitz.” I, no joy, nothing. I didn’t want it to leave. I didn’t want it anything.

• And Mengele asked, ordered me to report the pregnant females and to tell me with a big smile, sweet that they will get better food, milk, maybe bed. I went in a few blocks. We had 31 blocks in the lager. And I ask my inmates, let’s go to Mengele tomorrow morning. He will take you to a better lager. And so every day for maybe two weeks, I went to him with 3, 4, 5 people. I just cannot forget his face, his happiness, his smiling face. When he got those pregnant females, he ordered an SS man to go with them to the gate and to take them to the new block. Two weeks later, I was speaking to a male inmate, and I told him, I ask him, do you know where the pregnant women’s block is? And he told me Mengele use them for vivisection. Mengele takes away the embryos or the premature babies, and he plays with them vivisection. Now from that day on, I promised myself, even with my, to my life or to my death, there will not be more pregnant females in Auschwitz. The people came in with high pregnancy. That means in fourth, fifth, sixth month. And I went in with my dirty fingers, and with a sont. I got a sont from a prisoner, you know.

• [Interviewer] Syringe, a syringe.

• It’s like a, like a pencil, which be proof how deep is a wound, a sont. And I went in with my two fingers, and I manipulate it to open the cervix, which anyhow is easy in the fourth, fifth, six months. And I provoked a miscarriage. I kept a woman the whole night in my block on that place where she was lying. She was bleeding. It was a complete different medicine, different gynaecology. It was no infection. I never had. I had such dirty fingers. I had no instruments, but I never, I really never had infection. The patient, the lady was bleeding, so what? In Birkenau, not only Mengele was the sadistic torturer. It was the supervisor, a young lady by the name Grazier, who was really an angel-like beauty. She was a beautiful, beautiful young woman. She used to come very elegant with a selection group this light blue outfit and white gloves, also with perfume. And she had a whip. The whip was of different colour of beads, and with that beads, she used to torture us beating the breasts.

I have so many breasts inflamed with puss, and she was always there when I had to open that pussy infection. That was her greatest joy daily to beat the breast. She was a lesbian. She used to take two, three girls to a block, empty the block, and playing with them, and then sending them to the crematorium. She was now for a gynaecologist, for a woman, for a doctor to just to see Grazier daily, with her beautiful outfit, with her angel-like face, with her beautiful whip of beautiful coloured beads. And be standing there in the racks with lice and dirty and with faeces and with urine. That was a torture, but human being cannot understand enough. You have to be there. You have to be just one night there to close your eyes and to remember. That was the morning selection when Mengele came and beat up the girls, put them on the black truck, and send them to the crematorium. Friends, patients of mine, relatives of mine. And to, and staying there helpless, helpless. I had to stand there for an hour and not to say a word. You know, the latrine was such a, to go to urinate, to have defecation was such a problem because we have time, maybe an hour. And we had to run 1,200, 1,500 people to just dig, dig, digging, you know? It wasn’t a latrine.

• It was a ditch. A hole in the ground.

• A hole. And we just had to urinate, no paper. Sometimes we were crying for a piece of paper. There was no. So, we made a trick that from our ropes, we were taking off little pieces. And after the bowel movement, we used sometimes still the baseline it was taken away the rest or the rag. just because we used for our defecation. That was such a problem that when somebody was able to have a bowel movement, she was thinking that she is relieved that God came just to give her a miracle. I have seen in Auschwitz, very intelligent, cultured girls who went to sleep on the latrine with the male prisoners who came from the next lager to clean the latrines, just to be able to get a little piece of paper. I went out and the block was crying, praying, for each one, pushing because on that koya nine was sleeping on a little wooden piece with lice, with rats. And I went there, and I told them, think of it that this tomorrow morning the bread is a cake. Just when tomorrow morning you will eat your dirty bread, think of it that it’s a cake, and you will see it will have a taste of a cake. Think of it that your day will come very soon, and we shall go out dancing and singing. And I told them little stories, invented stories, that a mother lost the child, but it wasn’t. The child came back, or the husband was recovered, or a young girl who lost her lover came back to her. I invented stories, and I said beautiful poems from Heinrich Heine in German or in Hungarian poems. And that is the psychosomatic disease, but I learned so deeply there in Auschwitz that you can make a human being believe. You can give hope, and you can make the pain less. Not to take away, but you can make it less.

• [Interviewer] Who are you waiting for, madam?

• For the computer.

• [Interviewer] And who do you hope to find?

• My sister.

• [Interviewer] Your sister? What camp was she in?

• She was not in the camp. She was in the Lemberg ghetto.

• [Man] Caldwell, also from Hungary.

• Last name? Nobody.

• I’m real excited. You know why? Before, I met somebody that we didn’t see for 30 years, and we were really in a death camp together, you know. I’m real excited.

• Oh, it’s Greenfield, not Grenfield. What is the first name?

• Isaac.

• Isaac Greenfield.

• Greenfield. Prepare, try to find that he came from Hungary.

• Hungary, yeah.

• Yeah. I find nothing, but I try again.

• [Man] Find nothing?

• Yeah.

• I knew I lost everyone in my family, okay? I’d seen my father, and my father said, “Try to survive. "Whatever you do, keep the name.” I’d seen him one day, and the next day I went back to see him again. A man came to the window, and says he’s gone already. He was taken.

• [Man] Be quiet, be quiet. I am the only survivor of my family.

• I have noticed a sign on the board over there where it says that survivors from the camp Ravensbruck are supposed to be looking for a German table and leave their names there. Can you tell me anything about it?

• And leave your information right here on this paper, and we will have it here at the table.

• [Woman] It may, it may be quite important. Would you be so kind to.

• We’ll take care of it, yes.

• [Woman] Okay, I will do that. Thank you.

• [Worker] Where you live now, and if you were in camps.

• Well, on the day where they decided to transfer us to Auschwitz, they gathered us all in one camp. And as we arrived from the lower camp to the camp called Myufka, they decided that instead of shipping us to Auschwitz, they would kill us. There was about 300 of us from my camp, which was a camp, which was producing wooden boxes for ammunition for the Germans. So, when we arrived there, we were placed right in front of a very long grave, the women on one side, men on the other side. And they decided that they were going to shoot us. Well, the German in charge of this whole deal turned to us, and he told us that we have one many time to say prayers that he was going to shoot us. And he just said it in cold blood. And at that moment, something overcame over me, and I, looking at my mother and my father standing around and looking at the fright of on their faces, I knew that I had to act. And I jumped the German, and I caught him in the back by his neck, and I, and twisted my legs around his body. And then I grabbed the gun and tried to shoot him, but of course at that moment I couldn’t. And we fell to the ground. As we fell to the ground, there was a tremendous commotion all around among the Jewish people that were standing over the graves to be shot just as well as among the Germans that were supposed to carry out the ordeal. And the commotion lasted for a long time, because we were on the ground, and they did not know what to do.

They were afraid to shoot because they were going to shoot him, and naturally. So for a long time things were in uproar. And it took like about, I would say, I can estimate about an hour until things calmed down. By then, somewhat it got dark outside, and Russian planes were flying over the camp, and they were evidently afraid for their own. So they dismissed, you know, everybody, and they themselves ran away. But before they ran away, before they let everybody go, they shot me. You know, I was still on the ground. They pulled the German away from me, and the same German took a gun and shot me. I still have a mark on my forehead. And they left me. When they shot me, I actually felt that I wasn’t dead, that nothing was hurting me. So, I played that I was dead, and they left me. Well, in the morning they were looking for me, but since I was alive, I didn’t see any reason why I should stay on the ground. So, I slowly but surely crawled under one of the barracks, and I stayed there until morning. And I really didn’t even realise at that moment where I was, but in the morning I saw people walking out from the barracks, and I heard them speak my native language. So, I walked out. As I walked out, they grabbed me again, and they put me in a enclosure, and they were going to call the lager fuhrer, you know, who was in charge of the whole place. And they were going to decide what to do with me at that time. And, of course, their plans were to shoot me, but as it happened, I heard that my husband, to be at that time, had a diamond ring with him. And he paid this German the diamond ring if he shouldn’t shoot me. Well, he decided that what’s the use to shoot me anyhow because the next day they were supposed to ship us to Auschwitz, where they were going to send us to the crematorium anyhow. And that was about the end of this story.

• [Interviewer] They didn’t send you?

• They did send me to Auschwitz, of course, with my bleeding head and whatever it is. And somehow I survived. They did not send me to crematorium.

• [Interviewer] Are you sisters?

• We were together in a camp.

• [Interviewer] Are you cousins?

• Yeah.

• [Interviewer] You’re cousins from the same town?

• Yeah, she’s coming from America,

• [Interviewer] And where are you from in America?

• Detroit.

• Detroit.

• [Interviewer] Detroit?

• Yeah, I was in Auschwitz.

• [Interviewer] This is the first time you’ve seen each other?

• Oh, yeah.

• [Interviewer] Did you look, did you look for each other after the war?

• [Woman] Huh?

• [Interviewer] Did you look for each other after the war?

• Yeah, in Germany.

• [Interviewer] In Germany? And you didn’t try after that? Did you try the Red Cross?

• No, she had lots of trouble with the time. Her husband.

• [Interviewer] Is he still, is he still alive? Is your husband still alive?

• No, no.

• After half a year of this Czech family camp, as I told you, it came in order that they should be put in transport to Heidebreicht, but it was only a trick from the Germans. In reality, they should be sent, put to the gas chambers. My wife knew it. I was in another camp, and I couldn’t have any connection, that the camp was isolated. So my wife Ellie, which was, she was with my son Otto, which was at that time, 12 years old. So, she sent me a letter. There was some prisoners were coming to the camp. There were some maintenance kit, or they were bringing bread and food to this camp, and my wife was working in the storeroom. So, she got the letter to a prisoner, which was in old camp, and he brought me the letter on the 30th of June 1944. So, this letter gave me always the spirit. And when I was asking myself, you should leave it. You should forget this letter. I read always, and it was a testament of my wife, which gave me the force to fight on. And so, I devoted my whole life to fight against the Holocaust distortion, against the anti-Semitism, and to learn all the people what happened in Auschwitz, that it should never happen again. I will reread the letter. It’s written in Czech.

• [Translator] “My dearest, "on the last night of my life, I bid you farewell. "Our happiness has been short-lived but wonderful. "I recall our love from its beautiful beginning "until it’s cruel end. "You have been the greatest happiness of my life, "and I will gladly give my life to save yours. "And our little innocent Otto, "why should his short life be ended "by such a cruel, brutal end? "As the end draws near, I remember our dear ones. "If you meet them again, "tell them I kiss them a thousand times. "My beloved sister, my brother, and Orinca, Max, and Lydia, "and especially Danny and Lianka. "I wish them all a happier life than ours has been. "May they fight courageously for our freedom "and revenge the innocent blood of their dear ones. "Thank you, my darling, with all my heart "for the devotion, love, and joy you have given me. "Always remain what you are, a courageous, unbreakable hero. "I shall think of you and pray for your safety "until my last breaths. "Give my last toast and greetings to all your camerades. "Father beloved, we kiss you for the last time "Your Ellie and your little Otto, goodbye.”

• I am sorry to say that there was a great deal of indifference. In retrospect, I suppose, it was too horrible to believe, but I couldn’t have made up all these things, could I?

FILM ENDS

Q&A and Comments:

• What a powerful, powerful film. A lot of people want you to remind them of the date.

• 1981, the actual gathering, and then we broadcasted in 1982. It’s only ever been seen once and then repeated, and this is the first time I think I’ve run it publicly almost for over 40 years.

Q - In one of your other films you quoted, you quoted the rabbi who said to him it was an overturning of the Ten Commandments. Do you remember in “Auschwitz and the Allies”? Now, you’ve done a, you’ve made a lot of films tragically on these kind of themes. It’s the end of the world, isn’t it? I mean, how, when you look back at that work, and we live in a world where people still don’t believe, and anti-Semitism is on the march, how do you yourself deal? And what do you think we can do?

A - I must say that watching it for the first time in all these years, I felt really quite emotional. You know, I learned how to deal with these tragedies, and I’ve been doing this for over 50 years. Listening to some of the testimony brought back, my, the emotions of the time. You have to steal yourself to listen. I mean, they’re extraordinary stories, and I felt that the technique that I had to use was to be unblemished, unvarnished, no barriers between you and them. No music, none of these usual conventions. And I feel the utter desolation of those stories and the desperation of the actual gathering. Forgive me, I just wanted to, to relive my own feelings of making it a little. What was your question again? I’m sorry, Trudy.

• No, I was really asking how, in the light of all these testimonies, and there are so many more, that we still have Holocaust denial, and anti-Semitism is still on the march. And these are the issues that I find as we come up to Holocaust Memorial Day this week, and I don’t know if you remember, but today is the anniversary of the Wannsee House.

• [Rex] Wannsee Conference.

• Yes, do you remember? Of course, the beginning of another film you made. So, I suppose that’s my real question. All these years on, when so many of the people you interviewed, of course, would have passed by now, and it’s still, there’s still denial. It’s still, and it’s more and more being de-Judahized, and I think these are the issues I find most painful.

• But, you know, why should we assume that it’s gone away, that it would go away? You know, we are talking about, probably several thousand years or certainly hundreds and hundreds of years of prejudice, of ignorance, of stupidity, cruelty, and of course progress. It’s all jostled into one, but why should we assume that this, this poignant phrase, this, “this will never happen again.” Of course it’s happening again, not to us as Jewish people, but to, you know, how many genocides have we had? I’ve documented a number of them. The, it’s our greatest challenge to deal with our volition to cruelty, greed, and oppression. And the world challenges this every day. So I, the idea of, you know, that we can, this will be eradicated after it, of course, was, is hopeless. What we must still constantly do is educate, remind, commemorate, and visit such places. And that, that’s where hope lies, is to always be able to educate, to give another generation. That’s what I tried to say at the beginning. They must hopefully listen to what, what happened, and this film along with hundreds of others and all the education that goes on is our attempt to say to them, look, this is what we’re capable of. This is what we can do. This is what happened. And of course, history does repeat itself, and it’s this endless cycle and challenge that we face all the time. No, I’m not surprised.

• It strike. No, it strikes me though that education as we know it isn’t really making much inroads in this. I mean, Yehuda Bela, I think he listed 16 genocides since the Shoah. Another thing that I think is problematic is this tendency to take the Shoah, and Monty Goldman has remind. Monty Goldman, one of our listeners, has reminded me that we shouldn’t really call it a holocaust because that means a burnt offering, a sacrifice. Shoah or Hurban is much more acceptable, but what is absolutely extraordinary that it’s, that it still, not only that it still goes on, that all this education. And don’t forget, every year we have a Holocaust Memorial Day. Everybody comes along. There’s lots of services all over the country, and yet we go on. We go on being really the same basic creatures that crawled out of the caves, even though we have much better technology. But what I did find interesting about your film, I mean, Gisella Perl is someone I’ve studied at length. There were people even in hell who remained human.

• [Rex] Yes, yes.

Q - And that’s what the Nazis didn’t succeed in doing. And that’s what in, that’s what interests me. I don’t know if you want to comment on that because there were some very strong people you interviewed, weren’t there?

A - Yes, there were, but you know, as Lilli Kopecky at the beginning said, she saw the very worst and the best of people. And so, that surely is the reality that in times of enormous distress, people will react differently. Some heroically, a few, a minority, and most will do their best to survive and will do anything to survive. So, we have to understand more about ourselves, the human psyche in extremeness. And you know, it is a constant challenge, but what is extraordinary is not that it’s goes on, it’s that we don’t understand more about why it goes on. That to me is extraordinary. That our education doesn’t reach out enough to, to explain to people what we are capable of as human beings given certain circumstances. I mean, I, you know, I’m going to do a lecture I hope with you on torture. We heard about that. How can you train a torturer? That’s another human being inflicting pain. So, all around us are these potentials for distress, and on the other hand, you have this wonderful capacity to create goodness and achieve goodness. And in the end it’s to do, I think, with a moral education, the idea that we have certain values, certain human rights, which, you know, we’ve got to try and attain. I mean, that’s where the hope lies. The human rights is made much more applicable in societies taught more. Because accountability and scrutiny are the key to our being able to live in a world without anti-Semitism. And that is some ways off. Look at the world, as you said, at the moment.

Q - Yeah, yeah, some interesting questions here. Did any of the survivors meet any family or friends in the gathering? Were there any reconnections, I suppose?

A - Yes, there were. There were, yes, quite remarkable. People found each other. You get a small glimpse of that. I saw that today, I mean, it’s over 40 years ago. And people did find each other. It was quite something actually and incredibly moving. And that, you know, with three, what did he say? Between four and 5,000, between three and 5,000 people. Yes, people did.

• Yeah, that’s very special. In my travels in Eastern Europe, I heard many of these stories. Now, this is from Jennifer. She says that it’s only the Shoah of all the genocides that is denied.

• That’s an interesting point. It’s a very good point. Yeah, and that’s because of the legacy of anti-Semitism. And the Holocaust denial movement, is it a movement? But those who wish to do that, and there are many out there who do that, of course. That is a very good point. It’s part of the whole story of anti-Semitism, and I’ve tried to explore that myself in a series.

• Yes, I know. I know you’ve done so much work in this field, and we will be showing more of your films, Rex. I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary that Revisionism walks the earth and is becoming more and more popular with the extreme right and also the dilution of the Shoah. That’s something else that I find quite insidious. As I said before, the de-Judahization of it. And the other point that I find is very, very troublesome. There’s very little connection between the Shoah and the establishment of the state of Israel. It’s not on the curriculum, and as a result you’ve got, it’s almost like an isolated incident of victims. So, we talk about education, but we have to rethink what education means. There’s a lovely message from Sarah Maren, lovely Sarah, and I’m going to read it to you, Rex. “Thank you. "The film is both impossible to watch "and at the same time watchable, "unbearable and yet I manage to stay watching. "This should be shown everywhere, "to all groups large and small. "Thank you is all I can say, "but I mean much more which I can’t express.” Lovely, thank you.

• [Rex] Thank you.

• And Abigail is saying, “Work continues to be value, "but we all have to work together "to raise the level of humanity everywhere.” And then Georgette said, “Is your film safely protected? "It has to be seen at large and kept for future generations. "The problem is getting to see non-Jews seeing this film. "I hear their comments. "I cannot see this. "It’s too long. "Your film has the advantage of being "shorter than Lanzmann’s 'Shoah.’ "As to sitting through it, "we have to get them more motivated.” That’s what she’s saying.

• Sorry.

Q - Yeah, do you want to answer that one please?

A - Well, no, it’s an interesting point. The BBC owned the film. It’s never been offered, I think, for educational purposes. Thanks to you, Trudy, and the wonderful work you do on Lockdown that encouraged me to go back to it. And I’d like, it is a, you know, film, which is done in a particularly austere way unlike most stuff today. But I do think it has a power to it still. I did feel that, and I think people who’ve come, who come through to us have confirmed that. I would like it to be seen. Of course, I would. It’s a question of how you do it.

• It’s relentless. I think we would have a problem trying to get it into the schools today because everything’s become so, on one level, society becomes more appalling, and yet there’s a sanitization as well. So, there’s a very interesting comment from Carolyn how to train a torturer. “In the Bancroft library here in Berkeley, "they have ledgers from the Inquisition in Mexico "in which a scribe took notes "as people being tortured transcribing also the screams. "It makes one blood run cold.” And what is fascinating about the Inquisition is that the church actually decided that they should use torture. This was a papal decision.

Q - Yes, yes. I should be exploring that. I mean, who was the name of the lady who?

A - This is Caroline, I think maybe Layaman. Caroline.

• If I may say to Caroline, next month I shall be doing the second of my series on what I call “Roots of Evil,” and the the second part is called “Torturers.” And I look at both in historical contemporary terms. I try to answer or least explore these questions of torture. It’s something I’ve done on a number of occasions. And do watch if you can.

• Lynn and Rodney are alerting us to another film, a documentary on Lithuania from the South African Jewish report. Outstanding. “It’s only available for a week, ‘til this Thursday, "two and a half hours.” And the, he’s actually put up the link. “Part of this is very difficult to watch, but it brings light on the Lithuanian government "denying the atrocities and killing in Lithuania "by many Lithuanian citizens and the very brave individuals "who are trying to change this.” You see, Lithuania, that’s another issue, isn’t it, Rex?

• [Rex] Yes, it is.

• Countries under communism and what happened then.

• But actually, if I recall correctly, there were, it was the highest percentage of Jews killed in a country was Lithuania, and the collaboration of the local population was frankly terrifying. They were merciless. So, there was obviously a tremendous hatred of Jews, and they were given a sort of freedom to collaborate and to murder under the Nazis. I think they, even I seem to recall, even Nazis said, look, you have to stop. I mean it is terrifying. Lithuania has a particular history of this well worth looking at.

• Yeah, we’ve spent a bit of time looking at Lithuanian history on Lockdown, and I think we.

Q - Can I say something, Trudy? Can I just say this, that, I mean, the lady who’s just spoken I think is absolutely right. The coming to terms with each European country’s involvement in the Holocaust is very, very important, and I think that’s a real challenge that goes on all over Europe and indeed other parts of the world. I think you, Trudy, have dealt with that, have you not?

A - [Trudy] Yes.

• Which is the inability to come to terms with it, the inability to come to confront history.

• We’ll be talking about it more, Rex. And both Mary and Victoria have talked about the Armenian genocide, and of course that was a terrible catastrophe under the Turks. Now, they want to know, that’s also denied. Now, that’s political 'cause I’ve been involved in this. It’s political because of the alliance with Turkey. So again, the pragmatism of governments. The Armenians have had a terrible, terrible story.

• Yes, they have. The Turkish government, even now I think, denies the complicity of the state in the genocide. It is regarded as the first genocide, and there’s been a struggle for generations to get the Turkish elites to come to terms with this. It’s an ongoing struggle, but the Armenian genocide, of course, was a genocide that Hitler took note of.

• And one of the people who publicised it, of course, was Stefan Ihrig.

• [Rex] Yes.

• So, Judith Hyman, oh no, this is from Catherine Fedor first. “My parents were Hungarian and went to Israel in 1965. "In the lobby of the King David Hotel, "someone called her childhood name, "and it was an aunt she was sure had perished. "They reconnected for the rest of their lives.”

• Yes, in the King David.

• Yes, in the King David in Jerusalem. That is extraordinary.

• Good.

Q - And this is from Judith, “At HMD in Wales, "the Roma are mentioned, but there’s no mention of Jews.” What’s to say? What’s to say? Monica asks, “How did you pick these testimonials? "They’re so powerful amongst the many,” she asks.

A - Interesting question. Why do some people affect you, and others affect you less? It’s the combination of being an observer, being, of making films, of getting used to. Some people are, their stories are compelling. Others are less compelling. And I think when I went through, and you’re quite right, there were dozens of interviews we did. These were the ones that stood out. These were the ones that made me think, and as I’ve just said earlier, affected me now 40 years later. Their stories were just extraordinary, and there are so many of them. So, difficult to say why. It’s an instinct. It’s to do with experience. There you have it.

• This is from Anne Tate. This is a lovely comment. “I’m a non-Jew in Canada, "and these individual stories break my heart "and tell the truth. "Should be broadcast on Canadian television.” Thank you, Anne, for that. And this is from Leon. “The worry is that people who see it already know, "and it’s not seen by people who need to see it.”

• That’s always a challenge, isn’t it? Yeah.

Q - And there’s another question. This is from Rita. “Are you familiar with Ernst Zündel, "the Canadian Holocaust denier?”

A - Herr Zündel, yes, yes, I’m aware of him. Yeah, yeah. I don’t know what’s happened to Zündel. Now, was he Dr. Death? There’s another famous denier, a number of them, of course. And I have interviewed and met David Irving, our leading denier, of course, who denies being a denier and has lost his case. That’s another story.

Q - You’ve had an extraordinary career, haven’t you? You’ve made, apart from all the other films you’ve made and a couple of BAFTAs you’ve won, I think your films of Jewish importance are so important. This is, Levin is saying, “There was a Washington gathering with over 20,000 people,” and there’s a wonderful message from wonderful Eva Clarke. She says, “Thank you for showing this film. "Your film 'Kz’ is also remarkable "and needs to be shown to one and all. "I was born in Mauthausen on the 29th of eight, "of 29th of April 1945.” Eva’s actually told her story on Lockdown. But what can you say to that?

• This is Eva, is it?

• Eva Clarke, yes. I think she’s the youngest survivor I know.

A - Yes, that’s remarkable, Eva. And you’ve seen “Kz.” Funny enough, I’ve just had a message from the director of education there. They had Mauthausen, Eva may know this. I don’t know whether Eva has gone back to the camp to visit, but there is a memorial. And you’ve seen “Kz,” my attempt to explore in a postmodern sense what it was like, what experience of being a visitor is to such a place. And I’ve just had this email from someone saying that, asking permission if they can show “Kz” to people who visit the camp. But I don’t know why he wants to set it, to get people to get my permission. It’s very interesting that, and just very briefly on “Kz,” that the guides in my film did not hold back in vivid and in almost appalling descriptions of the nightmare that took place. And it seems that there is a method of, it’s a method of teaching that’s considered somewhat old-fashioned. So, I’d be very interested to know how they teach the subject, and that reflects on your concern, Trudy. How do we, how do you get over the appalling details? How do you, is there a danger of sanitising the experience, of sentimentalising it and so on? You know, it’s.

• And also, we now, we still have eyewitnesses, and we have films like this, but there will come a time when there are no eyewitnesses. And this is something that’s of concern to many survivors. There’s Monica, a question I can answer. “Will there be a talk on Romanians during World War II "and how half the Jewish population were killed? "The Romanians really have to be held accountable.” And for your information, Monica, we start Romania on Monday, okay? We’ll be looking at Romania for a couple of weeks, and then we are going to move to Germany. Anyway, Sue Diamond. “Years ago in a sociology class, "my professor had each of us interview "someone from another group. "I had the challenge of interviewing "an older Armenian woman in her 70s. "My translator didn’t arrive, "but the story she told was understandable "through her grief and limited English. ”‘The Turks came down from the mountains,’ “she kept repeating and crying. "She was living an impoverished life at this time "and was alone with her memories. "Her words are indelible in my mind.” Yeah, hmm. Sorry. So, you see, there’s more questions, Rex. I just want to take a couple more.

• [Rex] Please do.

• This is from Georgette. “Your film is in indeed poignant and a historic archive. "I know you are an artist, "but please don’t forget the distribution aspect. "Now is the time to reach out. "Do not rely on the BBC and the like. "They are laced with anti-Semites. "In today, social media is the way "to reach an immensely large audience.”

• I hear you, I hear you.

• Yeah, Rex. You always move on after your films so you don’t know how important they are, or maybe you do.

• The BBC owned the film.

• Yeah, the B-B, oh, it’s a BBC film. Ah, this is Eva. “I have been to Mauthausen with my mother, Inka Bergman.” She’s telling this, yeah. This is Sue Zimon giving more information. “Zündel has been tried, convicted, overturned, "and then ultimately deported to Germany "to face prosecution. "I believe he died about 2017.” Thank you, Sue. And Lorraine is alerting us to the documentary “Jack Hughes,” which is about Lithuania. You will see Sylvia Foote being interviewed. A while back, we had a session with the Lithuanian Nazi hunter. Once the website’s up, you’ve got to remember our problem is we’ve been going for nearly three years. So, some of these issues have actually been covered, but we just have to wait for the website. And, Rex, we must think of a way of showing more of your films. I think it’s so important. And I think that’s it. Rex, it was powerful. You know that. I don’t have to tell you. And thank you for your artistry because, and I know the pain it causes to make films like that. I know.

• I was more effective than I thought I would be.

• Anyway.

• Thank you very much, Trudy, for your work, for arranging it, for your passionate concern about Holocaust, and you’ve been doing it for literally decades. And God bless you for it.

• Oh, and you May I, can I make them smile? Just tell you, tell them how we met. May I?

• Please, please.

• I was, I watched the film “Auschwitz and the Allies,” which was made about 1982, and a friend of mine, it was on television. I think it was the first film ever really to deal with the Shoah on British television. Am I correct, Rex?

• I’m not sure, but no, “World at War” had done something.

• Oh, “World at War,” but this was the one that really dealt with guilt and all sorts of moral responsibility. And I got your number from a friend of mine, and I actually had the temerity to phone you up and say, “I love your film, but it’s too long.” And it was only when I explained that I was using it in class chunked into 20 minutes sections. And as a result of that, we worked together so many, and it’s been such a joy to know you, Rex. And we all respect you so much. So, again, thank you for showing this and take care.

• Thanks, everybody.