Recently in Hope & Remembering Category

Hope and Remembering: Honoring and Healing, a four-part film and discussion series featuring Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and the history that affects us all, offers its final presentation on Thursday, April 30, at the Roth Center for Jewish Life. The series concludes with the screening of the personal documentary, Angels of Austria: The Church That Reached Out to Holocaust Survivors, accompanied by a discussion with its filmmaker, Judy C. Faust. This series is proudly sponsored by the Upper Valley Jewish Community - supporting education and life-long learning - and Dartmouth Hillel. The public is invited to attend.

Angels of Austria: The Church That Reached Out to Holocaust Survivors chronicles an Austrian church's attempts to reverse centuries of Anti-semitism in their hometown by inviting Jewish Holocaust survivors formerly of Wiener Neustadt to return for a Week of Reconciliation in 1995. Judy Faust accompanies her mother and together they embark on an emotional roller coaster ride of grief, compassion, and healing. Christians and Jews explore their painful pasts while creating historic milestones they hope will mark an era of friendship and understanding. But how will Judy's mother forgive the descendants of the Third Reich when she hasn't even forgiven herself for not saving her father?

The Coastal Journal of Maine remarks that, "The Q & A and discussion afterwards is as powerful as the movie!" Greg Bates of Common Courage Press states, "At a time when we can point to many bad choices human beings make, your project casts humanity in its best light."

Judy Faust, a former art teacher turned writer and videographer, founded What's Your Story, a business that connects history to family stories and the arts (www.connectyourstories.com). Angels...is her first movie presentation that is touring churches, synagogues, and schools. 

 Angels of Austria...is being presented on Thursday, April 30, at the Roth Center for Jewish Life, 5 Occom Ridge, Hanover, NH, beginning at 7 pm. Admission is free. For more information about this event, contact Carole Clarke at uvjc@valley.net or 603-646-0460.

Further information about the series sponsors is available at: 

• The Upper Valley Jewish Community www.uvjc.org
•  Dartmouth College Hillel www.dartmouth.edu/~hillel

Photos courtesy of Judy C. Faust:

• Upper left:   Trudy Faust with her aunt, Herta Gerstl, at the Week of Reconciliation, 1995
• Lower right:  Trudy Faust with her daughter, filmmaker Judith C. Faust

Hanover, NH: Hope and Remembering: Honoring and Healing, a four-part film/discussion series, continues on Thursday, April 2, featuring Telling Their Stories - NH Holocaust Survivors Speak Out. The film, the third in this series, provides insight into the lives of four Holocaust survivors who eventually settled in New Hampshire, after many perilous journeys to escape the Nazis. Telling Their Stories... will be shown on Thursday, April 2, at 7 pm at the Roth Center for Jewish Life in Hanover, NH. Thomas White, Educational Outreach Coordinator at The Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College, will facilitate the discussion. The series is proudly sponsored by the Upper Valley Jewish Community - supporting education and life-long learning -and Dartmouth Hillel. The public is invited and educational materials will be available.

Telling Their Stories - New Hampshire Holocaust Survivors Speak Out shares the stories of four Holocaust survivors during WWII Europe and the paths that brought them from their home countries of Germany, Poland, and Hungary to New Hampshire. Stephan Lewy, from Germany, lived many years in orphanages in Germany and Paris, escaped from France in 1940, and served in Patton's Army as a "Ritchie Boy." Joseph Regensburger lived with his grandparents for several years before escaping Germany to reunite with his family in France. He served in the French underground and eventually escaped to Switzerland where he and his family were interned. Ruth Segal, from Poland, hoped to study medicine in Switzerland, but was prevented from leaving when the Germans invaded Poland. She eventually escaped with the help of "Righteous Among the Nations" Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Much of her family that was left behind died in Treblinka. Anna Berkovits Klein, from Hungary, was forced, along with her family, to move into a Jewish ghetto, the first of many moves from ghettos to barracks to concentration camps, including Stresshof and Bergen-Belsen.

These four survivors tell stories that are remarkable and move viewers on many levels. They have wrestled with many difficult issues and speak openly about them throughout the film. Anna Klein states, "After the concentration camp I didn't want to hear anything about any kind of religion or God...My God, as I knew him as a child, was a caring God and this God abandoned me...until I met my husband and he pointed out to me that God didn't do this to us, people did. And then I made my peace with God." Ruth Segal remarks, "I miss my family. I wish they were alive...I resent even seeing young Germans...the guilt is their fathers...When I see young Germans I say to myself: Where are my brother's and sister's children? Why aren't they here?" Issues and conflicts such as these touch not only the survivors' lives, but often reach into the lives of the film's audiences.

This film by NH filmmaker David DeArville was produced by Robert Spiegelman and Fred Wolff in association with the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies.

Telling Their Stories - NH Holocaust Survivors Speak Out is being presented on Thursday, April 2, at the Roth Center for Jewish Life, 5 Occom Ridge, Hanover, NH, beginning at 7 pm.

Admission is free.

For more information about this event or the film series, contact Carole Clarke at uvjc@valley.net or   603-646-0460        .

 Further information about the series sponsors is available at:

• The Upper Valley Jewish Community (http://www.uvjc.org)
• Dartmouth College Hillel (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hillel).

Secret Courage: The Walter Suskind Story Launches Film Series in at Roth Center for Jewish Life.

Hanover, NH -February 16, 2009 - Hope and Remembering: Honoring and Healing, a four-part film and discussion series featuring Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and the history that affects us all, will be presented in Hanover at the Roth Center for Jewish Life beginning on February 26. The series is proudly sponsored by the Upper Valley Jewish Community, in their continuing efforts to support life-long learning and education, and Dartmouth Hillel. The public is invited to attend the events included in this thought-provoking series..

The series begins with the screening of Secret Courage - The Walter Suskind Story, accompanied by discussion with the film's director and producers, Tim and Karen Morse of M&M Films in Marlborough, MA. In addition to continued screenings and public exposure, the Morses'goals for 2009 center on educational outreach. Karen Morse and survivor Ries Vanderpol have created the first draft of a Teacher's Guide which will be made available to educators at the screening..

Walter Suskind was a German Jew living in Amsterdam who was forced by the Nazis to serve as the Jewish head of deportation at the Hollandsche Schouwburg (the Jewish Theater in Amsterdam), used as the main deportation site in Holland. Using his fluent German, his skills as an actor and businessman, and unfathomable courage and tenacity, he and an intrepid group of resistance workers orchestrated the escape of close to 1000 Dutch children who were marked for transport to the death camps. In Secret Courage, we hear the stories of five of the saved children in their own words. Eleven of the resistance workers interweave their own stories, painting a picture of an incredible rescue operation fraught with intrigue and danger, but also carrying the moral and ethical dilemma of deciding who could be saved and who could not. Although Walter took the secret of this mission to his death, these survivors tell his story and reflect on his ability to carry on when others gave up. They leave us to question our own moral code and what each of us might do when faced with such choiceless choices.

"I have seen hundreds of Holocaust films and this is one of the great ones. It triumphs because there is no triumph - the children and their honesty take over the film," remarks Larry Langer, Holocaust Historian. Joyce Speaker, cousin of Dutch Holocaust survivors comments, "What a riveting and emotional film. Thank you for sharing it with all of us. We need to be reminded of how precious life really is.".

Secret Courage producers Karen and Tim Morse have worked in the photo, video, and film industry for over thirty years. They have produced projects both large and small in the corporate and educational sectors, as well as a large commitment in recent years to the world of non-profits. Secret Courage is their first independent project, a true "labor of love" where they managed all aspects of the production, including fund raising. The film has screened at nine film festivals and has had exposure in seven countries including Israel.

Secret Courage is being presented on Thursday, February 26, at the Roth Center for Jewish Life, 5 Occom Ridge Rd., Hanover, beginning at 7 pm. Admission is free. For more information about this event or the film series, contact Carole Clarke at uvjc@valley.net or 603-646-0460.

Further information about the series sponsors is available at:

• The Upper Valley Jewish Community
• Dartmouth College Hillel

Portsmouth, NH - January 7, 2009: The Hope and Remembering: Honoring and Healing film and discussion series continues on Thursday, January 15, at 7 pm at Temple Israel in Portsmouth, with the fourth of five films included in this series. Bonhoeffer, a documentary directed by Martin Doblmeier, is about the life, time, and eventual fate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran minister who was a part of the Resistance during WWII Germany and ultimately became involved in plots to kill Adolf Hitler while struggling with the question of what it means to be a Christian and peacemaker. A discussion of the film and its issues following the screening will be facilitated by theologian and scholar, Dr. Martin Rumscheidt, of Dover. This series is proudly sponsored by Awareness UNlimited of Dover, Portsmouth Community Radio, and The Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies at Keene State College.