AJC and New College of Florida Host Screening and Discussion of Holocaust film, “Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 PM,” April 22

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- by New College News

(February 23, 2010)  On April 22, the AJC (American Jewish Committee) West Coast Florida Region and New College of Florida will collaborate in presenting a free community program, the screening of the riveting Holocaust documentary by Claude Lanzmann, “Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 PM.” The film will be introduced by Aviva Weintraub, Director of the New York Jewish Film Festival and Associate Curator at The Jewish Museum.

The screening will take place at 4 pm at the Harry Sudakoff Conference Center on New College’s East Campus, 5845 General Dougher Place, with a discussion and light reception to follow.  While the program is free, reservations are highly recommended.  For information, directions and reservations, please call the New College Events Office at (941) 487-4888 or email [email protected].

When Claude Lanzmann was researching “Shoah,” his landmark documentary about the Holocaust, he heard the story of a Jewish uprising in the Nazi death camp, Sobibor, and decided it was important enough to merit a film of its own. The film, “Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 P.M.,”consists of Lanzmann’s 1979 interview with one of the survivors of the revolt, Yehuda Lerner, a youth at the time who had escaped from other camps and been recaptured.  The camera is trained on Lerner as he gives matter-of-fact answers, in Hebrew, to the director’s questions; these responses are then translated into French by an interpreter and into English through the subtitles. The film premiered in France in October 2001 and runs 95 minutes.

Aviva Weintraub is Associate Curator at The Jewish Museum and Director of the New York Jewish Film Festival, a collaborative project of The Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. She has published and spoken widely on Yiddish and Jewish culture, film, photography, and performance. Her most recent exhibition projects at The Jewish Museum include They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (2009) and Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Lower East Side: Photographs by Bruce Davidson (2007/08).

In 2009-10, she has served as a member of the jury for the Adi Prize for Jewish Expression in Art and Design in Jerusalem. She has been a member of the Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion at the Center for Religion and Media at New York University since its inception in 2003. She holds an M.A. in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University.

Please note that Weintraub will be interviewed on WSLR 98.7 on Friday, April 16, at 9:15 am. She will be a guest on The Surreal News, hosted by Steve Norris.

In 2001, The Guardian published an extensive article about the film. “On October 14, 1943, at precisely 4 pm, carefully selected inmates at key points, armed with knives and homemade hatchets, killed the majority of the guards, seizing their weapons,” wrote Peter Lennon. “The entire camp then made a break for freedom through the barbed wire, under heavy machine-gun fire and across minefields, suffering terrible casualties. Half of the 600 are believed to have made it to the surrounding forest and beyond. Of the estimated 300 who made it to the forest, half were recaptured and killed by the Nazis. The different nationalities –Polish, German, French and Belgian — went their separate ways in search of freedom; many were recaptured or murdered by anti-Semitic Poles. Historians believe that less than 60 actually survived Sobibor. This does not detract from the stupendous effort these half-starved, ill and despairing people made in confronting Nazi firepower. Nor does it detract from the powerful story of human courage Lanzmann’s film presents.

“What they did was prodigious,” Lanzmann is quoted as saying. “This was an extraordinary revolt. It was a revolt which was completely successful.”

The April 22 program is the second recent collaboration between AJC and New College of Florida.  Last April, the two organizations hosted a free talk by Ernestine Bradley on “The Re-emergence of Jewish Voices in Contemporary Germany.”  Professor, scholar, speaker and author, she is the former wife of past U.S. Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

The AJC is the nation’s oldest human rights organization.  The AJC has worked for over a century to promote democracy, pluralism and mutual understanding, and defends the rights of Jews and non-Jews the world over.

For information, directions and reservations, please call the New College Events Office at (941) 487-4888 or email [email protected].