Nothing like a #2G #Gabersdorf reunion - a #Chanukah treat. I’m always so happy to see my #schvester Zelda Grinblatt Wildman whose mother Sala Kuperberg was imprisoned in the same #frauenlager #womenscamp as my mom. I met her after I posted a story I wrote about my mom on FB & Zelda responded: my mom’s a survivor of #Gabersdorf. I was thrilled to find another living survivor. But Sala was too ill to meet with me and died a year ago. The first time we met, Zelda brought her mom’s old phone book and it was like the oil the Maccabees found in the Temple that lasted 7 days. Zelda has lit up my search in ways I couldn’t have imagined, linking me to others and sharing stories and photos that enabled me see what was once totally obscured. I can’t thank her enough & miss her. She recently made Aliyah, a move she doesn’t regret on a freezing NYC day like today. (Then again who are we to complain about freezing our tuchuses off when our moms suffered through 5 brutal winters w/out coats, proper shoes or heat in a Nazi slave labor camp in the Czech mountains? #2ndgenerationblues #holocausthumor) So often when I meet a #Gabersdorf daughter, we have an instant bond. Even though I didn’t know my mom was a #survivor, we all had similar childhoods & #motherdaughter relationships. So much of our mothers’ experiences have been transmitted to us. Call it #epigenetics or #ethnography, whatever it is, the aftershocks of the #Holocaust are still profound. Zelda told me about how she recently found the journal her mom kept when she attended the 1st gathering of #Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem in 1981. She wrote about being constantly on the move, searching for family, neighbors, pieces of herself, scanning every face, finding the woman who slept in the adjacent bunkbed, about 2 brothers who were reunited, of everyone still trying to fill that huge void left by the #shoah . I understood exactly what she meant, but can also say that each connection I make fills that void & is a #miracle. #HappyChanukah #Generations #holocaustherstory
A little macho but also so moving! Can you imagine just how meaningful that 1st #Chanukah in #eretzisrael must have been for those who survived the #Shoah, never gave up their #Zionist dream of a #jewishhomeland in the depths of their misery while struggling to survive whether in a #ghetto on a #deathmarch or in a #concentrationcamp & risked their lives again fighting on the front lines of the ‘48 war for #Israel’s #independence against the mighty Imperial British army, the occupiers of the land? Truly a #Maccabean #miracle. May their faith & memories inspire us. Did I mention my film traces my mom’s army & underground years, revealing rare footage from this era & an even rarer women’s story? Please donate so I can miraculously finish :) Link in bio. Thanks for your light #motherdaughter #nesgadolhayasham #happy2ndnightofhanukkah #survivhers #HolocaustHERoism #chanukahsameach
Happy #Hanukkah dear friends! You ignite me. That’s my mom in the light coat & braids, proud #jewishwoman #resister with #HanoarHatzioni #Zionist youth group in her hometown of #Sosnowiec’s ghetto, along with her friends Sonia Rottenberg Abiri (whose son found this photo at Israel’s #GhettoFightersHouse), Bella Jacubowitz Tovey & Hadassah Cudzynowski, all of whom I’ve filmed this past year w/your generous support. Thank you for being my lights! 🕯Keep the spark of these brave women #survivors alive by making a tax-deductible contribution to my 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor, the Center for Independent Documentary - link in bio. We’re 80% there but need to hit our year-end goals to continue editing & get this important film about #HolocaustHerStory out there, particularly during this time of spiking, global #antisemitism & #Holocaust denial. May #truth #faith #love outshine lies & hate. Help me illuminate the night. #beashamash #BlazeAPaththroughDarkness #Spark #Ignite #raisewomensvoices #HappyChanukah #motherdaughter #HolocaustHeroism #Sheroes #Shoah
Oh hey Adam, Thanks for your concern about my brain but it seems I’m not the dumb one here. You see, it’s kind of impossible for Jews to have been both perpetrators and victims of the #Holocaust. Similarly, if they colluded with nazis, how or why would they have also colluded with Soviets (not Sovients). You say I’m too “antiPolish” to understand, but clearly you’re too #antiSemitic not to. #dobranoc #holocaustdenier Please help me fight sick bigoted revisionists like this jerk by giving to my film. Link in bio. Thanks to all who donated! #taxdeductible #silencehate #spreadtruth #honor #holocaustmemory
It’s #GivingTuesday! Help me elevate these inspiring #survivor #voices through my film which tells a vital #women’s #Holocaust story. Just this morning my Facebook & Twitter accounts were hit w/hateful Holocaust denial messages. It made me sick. But I swear I’m not backing down. Let’s show that truth outshines lies & love is stronger than hate. No it hasn’t been easy persisting on this labor of love these past 7 years, but never has it been more urgent to get this #holocaustmovie out there. Help me make sure #NeverAgain means today & tomorrow. Please GIVE! Link in profile. Thanks xoxo #confrontantiSemitism #holocaustsheroes #HerStory #Shoah #womensvoices #notimeforhate #holocaustmemory #truthoutshinesalie #lovenothate #womendirectors #womenproducers #womenempowerment #womenmoviesrock 💗💪🏽💙#breakthesilence #silenceshamewithtruth
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation so we can wrap production of this empowering #women’s #holocaust film. We’re so close & need all the love & support we can get. Please see link in profile to give. 🙏🏻 Thanks! ❤️🙌🏼💙 #HolocaustHerStory #myundergroundmother #HolocaustHERoism #shero #MeToo #NotMe #untoldstory #Documentary #womensvoices #WomenOnScreen #womendirector #womenproducers #womencallingtheshots #BreakingSilence #2G #3G #ShoahSheroes #GenerationToGeneration
The #Trutnov #CzechRepublic synagogue was torched 80 years ago today on #Kristallnacht & its Jews who had settled there as early as the 1500s, industrialized the region & formed a Jewish community under the Austrian Empire in 1870, were violently expelled, sent to #Theresienstadt & from there to death & #concentrationcamps where they were killed. During the #Holocaust the #Nazis took over the region’s textile mills, many once owned by Jews & turned them into #forcedlabor & #concentrationcamps where my mother & 5,000 mainly Polish Jewish girls were trafficked, exploited & struggled to survive for nearly 5 years. After the war, a handful of survivors - some from Trutnov’s prewar Jewish community & a few survivors from #parshnitz women’s camp - restarted Jewish life in #Trutnov. But #Jewish life ended there in 1968 w/those few remaining families fleeing the country under the #Communists. In 2003 neo Nazis vandalized graves the city had symbolically placed in memory of 41 Jewish girls killed in the area’s camps during the #Holocaust. They’ve since been restored and I was honored to commemorate the 11 #womenscamps there w/the mayor when we unveiled a monument at the former #Gabersdorf camp 2 years ago. #NeverForget #kristallnacht80
For the past 7 years, I’ve been trying to imagine what it felt like to be trapped in a horrid spinning mill, forced to work 12-hour shifts w/out break as my mom did for nearly 5 years. The many women I interviewed told me about the thick cloud of dust in the factory that made it hard to breathe, the rapid pace of the machinery that kept them constantly running on little sleep & hardly any food, scared they’d faint, fall from exhaustion, be beaten if the machine got broken and they’d be suspected of sabotage or be deemed “unfit to work” because they got a limb caught in the equipment. But one thing they never imparted was just how deafening the factory noise was. I got a taste when I found a jute factory in #trutnov #czechrepublic Somehow I had forgotten that #NormaRae takes place in a textile mill. Watching it tonight was mind blowing, not just because of Sally Field’s brilliant performance, but because it gives you a window into that powerless and impoverished world. The workers in this movie were all adults. Even so, their voices were completely drowned out, their spirits crushed and their health compromised from this grueling labor. Imagine just how much more dehumanizing & frightening it must have been for teenage girls, separated from their families, trafficked by nazis during the #holocaust and languishing in a void. And yet like the hero of “Norma Rae,” my mother and her fellow inmates resisted, stuck together and found their voice, despite deafening oppression & inhumanity. #HolocaustHERoism #HerStory #gabersdorf #resister #persister #womenempowerment #unsilencedwomen
Please join me next Friday at the Manetto Hill Jewish Center in Long Island to welcome the #Shabbat & honor of the 80th anniversary of #Kristallnacht. I won’t be showing my film because it’s shabbat but I will be speaking about my very personal search & its significance now. You don’t have to be #Jewish to attend. My presentation is dedicated to the memory of the 11 beautiful lives lost in #Pittsburgh last weekend. Our hearts may be broken but our spirits & humanity are not. One of the most beautiful aspects of #Shabbat is welcoming guests & strangers. It’s said that my great grandfather, Reb Lajbucz Zygrajch, would wait after Friday night services until he found guests to join him for dinner. You are all my family, so you don’t need an invitation. But please reach out & bring guests in the spirit of my great grandfather, who was killed in the #Holocaust, and let’s show the world that #loveisstrongerthanhate #showupforshabbat #kristallnacht #neveragain #pittsburghstrong #ShabbatShalom #StopHate #Shabbat #StopAntiSemitism #amyisraelchai #Shoah #HolocaustHeroism #holocaustherstory
An incredible day bonding w/#Sosnowiec #survivor Goldie Zucker Finkelstein, her son Joseph & daughter Eve. Joe & his wife hosted the Philadelphia @holocaustmuseum dinner a few weeks ago. He mentioned in his opening remarks that his mother survived #Graeben, a #womenslavelaborcamp in #Silesia that became a #GrossRosen subcamp, similar to my mom’s camp #Gabersdorf & where a few of her close friends were trafficked. I was curious if Joe’s mom was possibly still alive so I introduced myself to him after the dinner. He was surprised to meet someone who had heard of Graeben, told me his mom was very much alive and that she, too, was from Sosnowiec. He asked me who I knew from the camp and I mentioned my mom’s close friend Bella. Turns out Bella was close friends w/Goldie’s older sister Topsha & had a photo of her, which meant everything to Goldie because Topsha didn’t survive the #holocaust. I called Bella & asked her whether Topsha was also close friends w/my mom. “Of course!” she exclaimed. When I entered her apartment today, Goldie told me I looked familiar, then when I mentioned my mom, she lit up & remarked: “you look just like your mother!” She opened up about aspects of her past she had sealed off, even from Joe, the torchbearer of the family and author of “I Choose Life,” about his parents’ experiences. Goldie hasn’t read it. “It’s too painful,” she says. But here we are, 73 years after the #Shoah, #generations trying to heal the fractures of family, lost friendships & entire #Jewish communities, grappling w/documenting this incomprehensible #genocide so it never happens again, as our country is reeling from our bloodiest #antiSemitic attack. And yet, Goldie hasn’t given up, and neither can we. “After the Holocaust, I vowed I wouldn’t hate anybody, not Germans, no one. Because hate is a never-ending spiral that eats you up and destroys you. And I’m a woman of honor.” Please help support this vital documentary so #womenofvalor & #unsilencedvoices like Goldie’s don’t get lost in the din of #hate #denial & #antisemitism See the link in my profile to give. #holocaustherstory #holocaustheroism #shero #Shoah #untoldstories #loveisstrongerthanhate 🙌🏼💙❤️