Holocaust film topic of Zoom talk
Saratoga Jewish Community Arts, with a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York and sponsored by Temple Sinai, presents a Zoom panel discussion of the documentary “Partisans of Vilna,” produced by Aviva Kempner in 1986, at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 22.
This Holocaust documentary focuses on Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Kempner, a law school graduate, became involved with several causes while working for a law firm in Washington, D.C., where she met a number of documentary filmmakers. “I got more interested in the power of film, especially to show political events,” she said. It was there she decided that she had to make a film about Jewish resistance, reopening her own family’s wounds of pain, hardship, and loss. “Partisans of Vilna” is a sensitive and powerful interweaving of interviews with more than three dozen former partisans and witnesses from Vilna.
Among them is Israeli poet Abba Kovner, a founder of the partisan movement and author of the first call for Jewish resistance, and the film has rare photographs and documents, including footage of partisan activity in the White Russian (Byelorussia) forests.
The documentary, unlike most others on the subject, focuses on resistance to German occupation while describing how the Jewish community of Vilna, Lithuania, once nearly 60,000 strong, was decimated. It chronicles and examines the extraordinary efforts of the few who survived.
Kempner spent six years raising money for the film. She saw herself as part of a generation that must seek out the truth.
“There’s a whole phenomenon — the politics and the psychology — of the second generation — the children of the Holocaust survivors. With this film, I wanted to show a time when somebody stood up to antisemitism. With the partisans, it was a way of how to die; they didn’t think they could survive.”
“Another 35 years have passed since Kempner produced her film,” said Phyllis Wang, coordinator of Saratoga Jewish Community Arts. “Notwithstanding the passage of time, we continue to see a wealth of memoirs published from the few survivors still alive, from their children; but most interesting, from the third generation, the grandchildren, still seeking out the truth of what their grandparents and other family members endured, grasping the bravery and the anguish and the suffering of those who fought or hid or were hidden.”
“Partisans of Vilna” can be seen on Amazon Prime, On Demand, and other streaming services.
Registration is required by emailing sjca.sjcf@gmail.com. Learn more about the Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival at www.saratogajewishculturalfestival.org, www.saratogasinai.org.