The Shabbat Show

[Music] hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the shabbat show great to be back with you again hope everybody had a wonderful passover we missed you i missed you it's great to back with you here again uh for another episode of the shabbat show it's been over a year since we started the shabbat show believe it or not and it's just i can't even begin to describe just how much it's meant to me personally and to the team and just how much we've tried to cover in this period of time and tonight's show is no different tonight's show is a show that means a lot it means a lot to us personally it means a lot to us as a community as a nation it's a show that is challenging we'd rather do shows that were lighter and comical and funner but these are one of those moments where we as a nation have to look back at something that was hard to look at and look at it right in the eyes and see what we can take from it and see how we can grow from it today is holocaust remembrance day and as a grandchild of two holocaust survivors i can tell you that it's not just a regular day on the calendar my grandparents they should have elevated souls i grew up in their home they lived down my block i my grandmother gave me cookies and milk with tattooed letters on her arm my grandfather sat in his study and told me stories that were beyond what i could ever even imagined in my worst nightmare and one of the things that scared them was that we would forget one of the things that they that that scared them as they got older especially was that we would forget we forget what they went through we forget their loved ones who perished we would forget the holocaust we'd move on with our lives we'd get lost in the glamour of our new country and we wouldn't look back we would forget them we forget what they went through but we're never going to forget them we're never going to let them we're never going to let them go whenever we forget not only our grandparents parents great-grandparents we're never going to forget their parents their sisters and brothers who never made it out of out of the ashes of the holocaust and we're never going to forget because it becomes a piece of us it becomes what makes us stronger and greater and more sensitive it becomes because the holocaust now is a piece of the jewish story just like passover was the beginning of the jewish story the holocaust is also a piece of that that long journey that we've started in egypt and we're anticipating ending with all the jews coming back to the state of israel and today's show is dedicated to a lot of different things of course sponsored as a program of the carl enoch goldman center for jewish values dedicated by our good friend jay goman thank you it's also very much connected to a great organization daily giving dailygiving.org if you don't know what it is is a great organization that gives a dollar a day on your behalf they're giving out tens of thousands of dollars a day a week um check them out dailygiving.org dailygiving.org they're an incredible organization supporting dozens and dozens of great organizations you give them money they give it out every day one dollar dedicated to them as well but it's also dedicated to every single person that survived the holocaust and that perished in the holocaust there are so many souls that were influenced by or what by today it's beyond and we are we're blessed to have them in our lives and we're dedicating the show to them and whether they're still alive whether their children or their descendants are alive or they're watching from heaven i want them they should see and know that we're not letting this day pass we're not letting this day go on like a regular day like i told people a lot growing up every day was holocaust remembrance day and for those who have parents or grandparents or great-grandparents that you've spent time with you know that it's just part of our life this holocaust was part of our life but no matter where we are whether your grandparents went through it or not whether your parents went through or it doesn't really matter it's our story the holocaust is our story and tonight we're going to try to learn lessons from it we're not going to ask why we're not going to spend lots of time on even many of the tragedies we're going to try to learn lessons we're going to meet great people that know it that have spent the life on it we've got videos from filmmakers uh about the holocaust we've got dr michael berenbaum on who's an international authority in the holocaust we've got the ormond on who is a producer that has made holocaust films we've got an incredible interview with the holocaust survivor mrs celia kenner and we're going to try to learn lessons we're going to try to hear stories we're going to try to get a picture so that we can be moved and inspired and charged to continue the legacy of the jewish people and to make all those holocaust survivors proud of us so stick with us there's a lot to talk about we're happier with us it's an important show and it's just an honor to be with you again tonight and we're looking forward to spending the time in such important matters like the holocaust let's begin with a video from a rabbi who recently passed away great great rabbi rabbi chief rap chief rabbi or by jonathan sachs check this out after the holocaust i feel i must believe in god because i simply cannot believe in humanity the holocaust did not take place in some medieval century the holocaust did not take place in some benighted third world country it took place in the very heart of europe it took place in the germany of goethe and sheila and kant and hegel and bach and beethoven it took place in the country that held itself to be the most civilized in the world in the century that was held to be the most exalted of the world it took place in enlightened emancipated europe and don't believe for one second that it was only germany if you had asked in 1900 which are the global epicenters of anti-semitism there could be only two answers paris the paris of the dreyfus affair and vienna the vienna of the notoriously anti-semitic mayor carl luga now paris and vienna were the most sophisticated cosmopolitan cities in the world and yet they were world leaders in anti-semitism and the holocaust was not driven ground up by the masses the fact is that more than 50 of doctors in germany were members of the nazi party the greatest philosopher in germany martin heidegger was an enthusiastic member of the nazi party the greatest legal mind in germany carl schmidt was the legal theorist of the nazi regime were dismissed overnight every single one of them from all the professions from the courts from the law from medicine from academic life and nobody protested and the truth is that had they protested those protests would have been affected because we know that actually certain doctors and certain christian leaders protested the euthanasia program and it was stopped but nobody protested when jews were simply overnight removed from the professions and declared to be in effect sub-human now these were the leading minds in germany the van say conference in january 1942 which resolved on their end lozenge the final solution more than half of the people sitting around the table were doctors they were either medical doctors or people with doctorates and they were the ones who decided on the vernier the extermination of all 11 million of europe's jews that was the plan that europe as a whole should be euden rhine free of jews now i don't know anyone who can have faith in humanity after that it is shattering and shocking and therefore i feel we have to have faith in the one being who has lifted humanity towards the angels and away from the demons and that is god for me belief in god after the holocaust is difficult but necessary wow what an incredible perspective that i've never heard that creates uh a real way of seeing the world our first guest uh dr michael berenbaum is a writer an author and editor of 22 books scores of scholarly articles hundreds of journalistic pieces he's a lecturer teacher consulting in the conceptual development of museums and development historical films where he has earned more than a dozen emmy awards and four academy awards the director of the sigi zirig institute exploring the ethical and religious implications of the holocaust at the american jewish university where he's also professor of jewish studies dr barabao thank you so much and welcome to the show thank you for having me it is an honor to have you on and thank you for being here such an important night you know from 1988 to 1993 you served as the project director of the united states holocaust museum overseeing its creation this museum has changed the face of uh the american perspective on the holocaust can you share with us a little bit what it was like to be on that team what it was like to be a person who was really forming how the holocaust would be taught to the generations afterwards well we had a difficult task a difficult task is how do you take people back 50 years in time and remember when we were creating a museum it was 50 years in time it's now 75. and how do you move them a continent away and how do you introduce them to a horrific story without an effect creating a chamber of horrors and our task was to move people off the national mall move them back in time across the ocean and to confront this event and to say that this event has something to say to the american future to the human future and we began essentially uh by first making the transition easily uh easier because we first saw it through american eyes we began with an ocean of liberation and with not the liberation of auschwitz by soviet troops but the liberation of american troops who were accidental liberators they happened upon the camps nobody set out to um liberate a concentration camp they were in route to berlin to win a war and then they met the survivors battle weary veterans who had killed and seen buddies die went into a world which was radically different from the world even the difficult world of combat they saw what they saw and they had to struggle to become instead of warriors healers but they asked the question how could this happen and we tried to answer the question how could this happen and the rest of the museum answers the question that they answered and we walk you through the evolution of the holocaust from the world before because we believe that before people were victims they were people and we had to see the real live people of that world we asked the question how does a democracy become an authoritarian ultimately a totalitarian regime and then we walk you through the holocaust step by step from the rise of nazism to the beginning of war to gatherization to the mobile killing units to the concentration camps to the death camps and then we asked the question what were the alternatives so we confront the rescuers we confront the people who fought in resistance we then grapple with the question of what does this mean and we concluded in a very interesting way we had a problem how do you conclude the holocaust how do you conclude the story of the holocaust the ideal conclusion is not available to us if i had my druthers about the world i live in the ideal conclusion is we would look back on the years 1933 and 45 and say it is impossible to believe that human beings would do that to each other because we couldn't possibly do that to each other but that's not the world that you and i inhabit not the world that our children inhabit we understand that hatred can continue to exist and can indeed reassert itself in our world so we conclude in a very special way by asking survivors to tell their story because they are the people who transition between that world and our world and we've seen the incredible thing about survivors is they did two things that were extraordinary they've transformed victimization into bearing witness they didn't turn their back on the world but they brought forth a testimony which says that all life is sacred that we are responsible for one another they behaved like the ancient israelites behaved as we remembered egypt which is what to expand human memory to deepen human conscience to be recommitted to human dignity and human decency and they became the moral teachers of our generation wow consequently we conclude with our testimony wow wow so incredibly powerful and it's interesting as a grandchild of a holocaust survivor how true that is and how much that's what they were doing but as listening to articulated it uh it brings it to life in a new way i wonder as you're saying what you're saying if there's a connection i know that you were the president and chief executive officer of the survivors of the shawa visual history foundation you were the point person if i if i'm saying this correctly um by a organization founded by steven spielberg after all of these these uh holocaust survivors were given their testimony i wonder if that was the the connection uh let me give you the connection um i was speaking to students this morning and i said the dilemma of life is you live it going forward and you understand that only looking backward wow that's great and that is especially younger students have their entire future ahead of them they don't know what life will bring after you've lived life and i'm now uh uh now at at least what the in the bible they say are the years of one's wisdom hopefully um you then understand your life so let me tell you my journey in 30 seconds i grew up in the post-war american world my i went to um hebrew speaking jewish day schools where we learned everything never spoke a word of english in the morning and our teachers were two types of individuals they were either survivors but we didn't use the term or they were refugees who escaped here in the 1930s leaving europe brilliantly leaving europe and reconstituting their world in the united states they didn't speak of the holocaust they spoke about camps they spoke about children they spoke about we were the generation of ice cream and whipped cream would make up for a great generation that was lost so if you look back at my career i've done two things in life to remain faithful to where i came from i told the story that they could not tell to the american people in a language i believe the american people could understand and then i had the privilege working with steven spielberg to allow them to tell their story forever and ever meaning it we worked in 57 countries in 32 languages we amassed more than 50 000 testimonies of holocaust survivors which allowed them in every language that they experienced to share their memory with the world something that they could not do when i was a child and let me give you just one sense of that imagine if we had the ability to go back and meet the people who were slaves in egypt who got out of egypt because they had a hero by the name of moses who went through the sea and walked into the desert and they didn't make it to the promised land but their children made it to the promised land what might our seder look like what might i say to look like we re tell the story but here we have the capacity to retell the story hearing the words seeing the faces capturing the images of the people who lived through the story and who are now sharing the story with us and that that ultimately is what i've been able to bring forth into the world me certainly not alone because i i worked with teams and i always said to my teams i'm responsible for everything that's wrong you get credit for everything that's right because when you work on a creative project you have to gamble yeah and you have to be prepared to take risks and as long as my colleagues were willing to take risks i was willing to take responsibility well dr bearman we really appreciate you being on with us i'm sure there's so much more that we can delve into um but we thank you for what you've done for the educational landscape about something that's so critical to our history and thank you for who you are and shining your light on this world thank you that was dr baron bauman what an incredible individual and i i look really i just for a second want to just appreciate him and the work that he's done um we can't take this stuff for granted that there are people out there who've dedicated their lives to telling the stories of others especially and just just to share a second before we continue on he said something that was so profound about holocaust survivors and that was my experience with my grandparents they did not look back in a way that was negative they carried on and bear testimony i want to go back to the second part of that film or turn back to her by jonathan sachs to hear his words again check this out how did the holocaust affect my personal faith well firstly it hugely strengthened my jewish identity because i just felt the weight of all these ghosts and i knew that what they died for i had to live for i could not let their jewish story end with me i just couldn't but it did completely transform my understanding of faith and here i want to speak about a midrash a rabbinic exegesis which dates from will 4th 5th century and its commentary on abraham leaving his land his home his father's house and the midrash was very enigmatic says the following what was the matter like it was like a traveler who is going through a desert and sees a palace in flames and he says is it possible that the palace has no owner just then the owner of the palace appeared over the parapet and said i am the owner of the palace now that's a very enigmatic midrush but once i had been to auschwitz i really understood what it meant and it is a rather dramatic thing abraham saw the universe it's a palace this vast universe this vast law-abiding universe the laws of chemical chemistry physics you name it it's it's a universe that is pretty predictable for the most part it obeys its laws it's a palace somebody made it it has design but it's in flames i see a world full of violence war injustice exploitation cruelty now somebody builds a palace doesn't leave it to the flames you try and put the flames out so how can i understand that on the one hand the universe is a palace and on the other hand people are ruining it and killing one another and that's when god appears to abraham and says i'm the owner of the palace i need you to help me put out the flames god who made the entire universe can't put out the flames of violence and injustice yes there is only one thing god cannot do without help from us and that is live within the human heart wow incredible concept here and responsibility that we have speaking of responsibility i was very touched and moved by a woman who went through the holocaust and her story was so powerful it almost makes you want to do good and to do better such a powerful positive uplifting touching story i had the opportunity earlier this week to interview a great woman her name is mrs celia kenner she was born in 1935 in lava poland when the nazis invaded her city in 1941 she was separated from her parents her father was drafted into the russian army while her mother was selected for the laborer camp desperate to secure her safety her mother found the childless christian couple and to raise silly as her own she has an incredible story i we did this interview i encourage everybody after the show to go to view to projectinspire.org and get the full interview but check out this highlights of what we learned this incredible story from a mississippi counter the germans invaded and instantly the world changed my biological father was drafted to the russian army never to be seen or heard from again i didn't understand anything other than my dad is gone my world changed i'm hoping for friends to embrace me but they point me point at me well being pointed at meant that the person who collects unruly dogs collected me and maybe some other kids that were jewish i don't remember them taken to the front of the house and made to walk up onto a truck on sort of a makeshift staircase and as i come up i grab onto his pants of his leg and asked him in polish what did i do wrong why are you taking me on this truck because what i'm seeing on the truck is other children behind a chain they're crying they're vomiting and they're hysterical do you have children of your own i asked how would you feel if your kids were on this truck i didn't do anything wrong i must have touched the sensitive note in his heart he grabbed me by my long blonde braids and instructed me not to come back to the house from the backyard where they found me until nightfall my mother and i and some other family members who lived in this multi-family dwelling where we live we were forced to leave everything behind and go to the ghetto and my mother who was young strong beautiful and charming she was forced against her will of course to work in a forced labor camp outside of the ghetto my aunt and uncle by um sort of means of um you know like compensating someone who offered a place of hiding my aunt and uncle took care of this sometimes they brought me along with them to go into hiding during these race and sometimes i was permitted in and and the person who was offering this hiding place and permitted my aunt uncle and my two cousins who were older than i they permitted them in but not i and the cry my cry or any young child would give away everyone who was in hiding so my aunt must have had a very difficult time making that decision but she bent down and hugged me and whispered to me celia you know how much we love you you know we know how smart you are here's a dog blanket cover yourself with the blanket and go nearby that house nearby words ruins cover yourself with the blanket you'll sleep the night and in the morning we will probably be together again and as i'm sleeping i'm dreaming i think but i hear footsteps in my dream and as the footsteps come closer i realize i'm not dreaming because a voice rings out and the voice is saying sir celia if you are here if you can hear me we won't see you anymore all the people including my family were discovered in their place of hiding i never saw them again and i'm alone some time passed and mom who worked in a forced labor camp in live a well-known camp but mom came back she said look i found a family they know you and they like you and i'm sure that if you want to live you will follow the directions and you will have a chance of light if you escape the ghetto all i know is in the driveway mom and i hugged neither one of us cried but we both knew that we will never see each other again mom left quickly the woman who was at the door opened her arms brought me into the house and this is now dark the end of day and i didn't remember them but they did remember me so it was a polish woman her husband my polish father who was a professor and the parents a grandma and a grandpa and i became accustomed to them and they loved me and my grandmother coddled me and slowly i began calling them mom and dad and and now i have a mom and a dad and grandparents and i put the ugly past of the ghetto and those experiences away one morning i shuffled upstairs and the with the picture window that faced the house directly across the street two adults and two children publicly hung directly across the street from our window this couple across the street were hung as punishment because they were saving two children it became an issue that they will be seeking other homes and that is no longer safe for me to stay with them the next morning after saying our tearful goodbyes and tears we walk out through the back of the house and my a beautiful polish mother sits me down on the steps and says to me celia if i hit you in the barn and i will bring you food only when it is my turn to feed the animals but you're not gonna be alone you're gonna have a friend wow i'm gonna have a friend a little girl i can finally have someone to play with and chat of course i agreed so she took the pitchfork separated the hay and way up on top i'm expecting to see this little friend but what i see is a emaciated unrecognizable woman it was my biological mother this polish angel woman hit my mother in the barn for almost a year while i was upstairs driving but because she was alone because she only got food either once in three or four days mom built back my life up until that point and told me that if she loves me all she did was to save my life but if she doesn't make it i have this beautiful polish mother and family that will help me to live we stayed there probably an additional maybe a year and a half she would come every third day bring us the updates of where the war is going and finally came and told us that we were liberated and a few months after that still in the house that was our spree war the super of our pre-war time was still there he received a letter from someone addressed to my mother and my name mom couldn't recognize the name but she recognized the handwriting the letter was from my biological father who escaped the russian army and survived in a different part of russia we left poland went on through different parts wound up in a displaced person camp in germany um we had not any knowledge of any family that survived but through the hias in the displaced person camp mom mentioned a brother who immigrated to the united states pre-war they got in touch with him and he sort of sponsored and guaranteed and we came to the united states on august 27 in 1949 it was a non-jewish human woman and a human being with soul and heart that saved me and my mom and now kanahara we have a beautiful family of children grandchildren and great grandchildren an incredible story i encourage everybody go to shabbat show.com and listen to the entire interview there are so many pieces that uh to this story that makes it even richer that you have to listen to and it's such an incredible story of uh such a such an incredible person in her survival story i want to wish a couple of shabbat shalom before we continue to me i find these shabbat shaloms always amazing but this week i'm finding them even more because my grandparents always taught me that the greatest revenge to hitler is more and more jews and more and more connections and more and more kids and more light that's how we were raised more light so um the jonathan turbello shabbat shalom thanks so much to ron this is on my facebook tarana adler shabbat shalom from fair law and shabbat shalom to you to samantha government from toby hanna pennsylvania shabbat shalom to devorah uh devon millman from boston to michael weingart from germany shabbat shalom to janet michael from calgary shabbat shalom we'll do a couple more of those who are on zoom let us know if you want to go to my facebook uh we'll get it throughout the show but i just wanted to uh just it's beautiful just to show you that they tried to wipe us out and here we are um just one of many programs uh across the world all watching and remembering uh what an amazing amazing testimony to the light that continues to shine and we'll do some more shabbat shaloms and please feel free to just to wish us a shabbat shalom and every single person today is even more it's all you always love it you're always beloved but today even more our next guest is an incredible individual um award-winning filmmaker gee orman is with us he's the founder and creative director of big productions uh an incredible storyteller who captivates audiences of all ages and backgrounds he's networked with most respected holocaust historians museums educational institutions um and with many of the leading filmmakers worldwide he's a good friend we've done a lot together and he's produced many films for project inspire kia thanks so much for all that you do and welcome to the show thank you charlie so it's a pleasure and an honor to be here you know you're you're it's great to have you on especially now uh we've had you on a whole bunch of things through throughout the year because you're so you know so much involved with what we do but for a decade you've been really involved in telling stories the holocaust i've been to premieres where you've shown videos of different people and they've been blow aways year after year different aspects of the holocaust you've done work with project witness you've created documentaries tell us a little bit about how these films help people have a greater understanding for the holocaust how is filmmaking so critical for sort of holocaust education sure i mean kind of what like dr birnbaum said before about when he would when he was working at the showa foundation and interviewing you know so many survivors when you when you see someone um who went through the holocaust and you actually hear them and you you know it's different than reading a book reading a book is great because your imagination puts you there but when you're seeing the person you see the emotion and they're also you see photographs the visuals that you can that i mean visual storytelling is is is an amazing tool and it's extremely powerful and and it's a teaching it's not just to feel emotional and you know feel sad or things like that and connect with them but it's a tool to use for education and that's the goal of it because he he brought that up literally in your interview with him was how do you reach the next generation yeah now i instead you had special permission to take drone footage over auschwitz right i want to take a look at that with you um that you got that permission and what that did for you and then maybe we can talk about it so let's look at this film together and then we'll come back and talk about it one of our goals for filming in poland for the documentary we decided we wanted to film drone footage aerial footage at auschwitz thank god through project witness we have a very close relationship with the auschwitz foundation and they gave us special access to come in early in the morning two hours before auschwitz actually opened up to the public so to have ashworth empty and have no visitors there walking around while you're filming from the air is tremendous aerial footage and drone shots allow us to get a different perspective of the location of where we are to get a wide perspective to see really how big and how large auschwitz won and auschwitz ii birkenau are because you don't see it from the ground and when you read about it and you see pictures in a book it's one thing but when you see it from the air and you see how vast and huge the killing machine you see how vast and huge the camps were that the nazis built to murder the jews there's no words to explain it [Music] having the drone footage available to edit into the film really made a huge difference and it adds again it adds a new perspective and something unique to it and seeing it also just blew my mind because it's one thing when you see you know the gas chambers that the nazis destroyed in birkenau but when you see it from the air and you see the system how they built things they really thought everything out you know everybody knows the germans were very methodical in planning auschwitz and planning everything and you really see it more from the air [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] my [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow so ghee let me ask you a question um what was that like when you when you saw that footage give us if you can the personal ness of being able to sort of capture what you capture and what that did for you well when we went there i had really i reached out to bbc actually because they did a film uh using a drone and they wanted to charge us about a thousand dollars for 10 seconds to use it of 10 seconds for their footage so i said i'm gonna hire my own drone company so we went there and i you know i didn't know what to expect and when you see again like i said it in like the behind the scenes footage when you see everything from the sky you see how big it was and everything they did it was like mind-blowing you know and you and you get a different perspective when you're walking on the ground you see that you see things but when you see from the air it was i get chills thinking about it you know what i remember that you know and i remember like when we flew through the gate of the ash was a famous gate the dust was kicking up so it looked like smoke but it was dust and just the whole thing was was was all from god the whole like the whole day was it was it was a crazy day um you know and it there's about it went out it went viral honestly it went out everywhere and people you know ripped it off which i'm okay with you know it went out probably i i mean i counted the other day i think it was like 12 million views i know about and then it's been picked up by al jazeera and a lot of other news stations they actually pay now to license the footage because people are using it in different exhibits and museums and it's it's a it was it was an honor to be a part of that and it was it was definitely a highlight of my career yeah yeah and and it brings into perspective things that like you said we would never be able to fully understand until we have that visual i know that one of the films you produced was hidden which we have a clip about give us a brief intro as to what we're about to watch yeah so hidden was the film about hidden children um you know we just listened to survivor interviewed it before she was hidden um so we we did we had there's so many great clips in that film but i really i chose one about abe foxman who's a well-known person abe foxman who uh you know worked at the adl for many years and now um i think he's still part of the museum of um in battery park city a museum of um tolerance or i forgot the name exactly um but he um we did an interview about his story he was a hidden child and he was hitting with his nanny and his nanny didn't want to give him back to his family and they actually stole the kid they could the parents kidnap their own child from the nanny but the clip i chose to show you was his ending was such a it was a message when i when i listened to it yesterday i was like this is a perfect message for today because it talks about you know us as as jews and and what are what how we overcame and how we won and i just thought it was very appropriate for for the show charlie honestly i thought it was a great message let's go let's go to it let's go to this clip right now i think one of the greatest lessons of faith is the rebirth and when you look at the roman the greek the incas whatever and then you look at jewish civilization when the romans were defeated where the greeks were defeated when the incas was they had whatever they got up in the morning and they said vet i don't want to be a roman i don't want to be a greek jews after every tragedy dusted themselves off and said i want to continue being a jew the greatest miracle if you will after the showa one third of the jewish people destroyed in a horrendous way and these the survivors got up brushed themselves up and said i want to be jewish and i want my children to be jewish some of them lost everything mother father families everything what was there necoma what was there is to not to give hitler his posthumous victory to raise a family raise children teach you to skype build yeshivas etc that's a very important lesson it's a very important lesson i think that's maybe one of the most important lessons that i've heard in a long time as he's saying it i'm appreciating my grandparents even more i don't think i could have appreciated them more they're my heroes and now i'm thinking wow even more so my grandparents chose to to stay jewish and to be proud and that's why we are where we are and so okay thanks for sharing that with us um there's one more clip here that i want to go to it's super powerful like i'm just giving everybody like a heads up like sort of like hold on to your chairs now um and i don't know if this is one of the most powerful pieces you've produced in the holocaust but i know that this is a piece that what you're you're showing this piece across the country um the different public school systems on this anti-hate initiative give us a little bit more about what we're about to say yeah so first of all all these films you know really uh are part of it's all part of project witness who's some you know organization i work with closely so thank you to them first of all but the anti-hate initiative is actually part of um initiative from new york city um before covid started there was this really big initiative obviously to try to fight anti-semitism which morphed into not just fighting anti-semitism but anti-hate and how do we reach the next generation how we reach the kids but not necessarily the jewish kids only in the schools that we typically are in but how do we reach kids in public schools so that became that became the you know the goal and so one of the things that i i thought of was in order to really connect with something you're watching it has to be short and you have to see yourself in the situation because if you're watching if you're in public school and you're not necessarily jewish and you're watching you know a film about uh you know the holocaust and you're seeing a lot of jews in there you're not connecting with it so you have to see yourself so that's what we did and we made a trigger film and impact film and you'll see you know like you said it's it was pretty intense um a different time i'll show you charlie all the behind the scenes of it it was pretty amazing but um yeah so we we've showed it in a couple of public schools but then corona hit and everything got put on hold down so actually this is the first time we're showing it in a long time okay never been shown in public before okay well those who are watching this just just for those who are watching this hold on to your seats check this out [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] you know to me that i i i i'm still shaking from this i gotta tell you it's i don't want this to be this real but it is this real like we seem to take the holocaust and put it into a little you know it's like sort of superhuman beings like with the people that left egypt and we forget even though we even though we're related to a lot of these people like you understand like how crazy this is even though we're related to these people these are regular normal people sitting around and like this families just like this you wake up eating dinner everything just changed you know so this you know when we showed this in crown heights in a public school and these sixth seventh and eighth graders are watching it and i could uh it was the the reactions were audible yeah yeah it was powerful and there was a holocaust survivor there who spoke to them and they you know were all around him and they were you know literally like running up to hug and kiss him wow wow okay thanks so much for joining us tonight and thanks for what you do and how do people watch more of your stuff like if let's say someone's lost you're watching this now i'm going hey i want to watch more films where do they go to watch more of your films really for most of the holocaust films uh seven documentaries we've done already with them um project witness okay org i've seen a couple of these for the for everyone who's listening and they are unbelievable like unbelievable it's so worth everyone's time sit around with the people in your family go to theprojectwitness.org and watch this this is our history it's and like he said i mean first of all he does an amazing job and more number two you there's no comparison to seeing the pictures and the testimony it's something that you don't want to miss it's an it's an honor to be a part of that and also an honor to be your friend charlie anyway so thank you love you thank you thank you so much for being on and thanks for all that you do in china in this world thank you and that was and you really should really check out his stuff he's an incredible filmmaker in general but but in particular um the work that he's done with project witness and practice when this is an incredible organization before we get to the last film stick with us a little bit tonight i want to do a couple more shabbat shaloms just because it's giving me you know you know the hammer as they say in hebrew a little consolation now in this world of them trying to rip us and destroy us and and and just the thinking of the holocaust i'm just getting a certain measure of comfort and just knowing that there are jews from all over the world right now beyond right now shabbat shalom to jerry and eileen hirsch milwaukee wisconsin to the novak family from toronto um to the kodish family uh to to joan cody shabbat shalom to you and thanks so much for being a part of this um shabbat shalom to lisa um and maura bayla from maynard men massachusetts shabbat shalom uh to to john shabbat shalom to the levin family in south phil michigan shabbat shalom to mark michelle mandelman i'm from new jersey shabbat shalom to you guys to debbie newhouse shabbat shalom to the silvers in highland park to linda schwartz from annandale uh virginia shabbat shalom and her father is a holocaust survivor as well and um shrusham to everybody that's that's joining in um uh we have one more video to show before we end you don't want to miss this i mean we have so much more to say obviously um but there's such an incredible film about an individual who who at first wasn't really sure that the holocaust even existed and then his incredible journey of realizing just how powerful it was check out this incredible film there is a lot of ignorance among palestinians about the holocaust the logic goes teaching about the holocaust is normalization normalization is treason as a teaching about the holocaust reason so actually i was accused of treason my name is muhammad dawudi and i was born in jerusalem we grew up on the idea that the holocaust is a conspiracy to deport us from our homes in order for jews to come and live in them i trained as a fighter to liberate palestine however in 1993 my father had cancer he was having chemotherapy treatment at the israeli hospital in ankara i started to notice that he was not being treated as an arab as a muslim but rather as a patient many palestinians were receiving treatment by israeli doctors at that moment the good in my enemy bro open the gates of my heart to the good in me while before the evil in my enemy had opened the gates of evil and hatred and enmity in my heart i believe understanding is key for reconciliation so to me what is right was to educate palestinians and arabs about the holocaust it was planned that will take palestinian students to concentration camps at australia what impact will that have on their way of thinking there was one student who came to me and said that people told them your professor will see what will happen to him when he comes back [Music] i remember very well when i saw the ovens uh just we entered that dark place and we saw the orphans it was the most difficult moment for me i couldn't sleep well because of the nightmares and i filled the souls around me like all the time i feel that there were millions of people living here and they just disappeared and i i don't know in a moment this really shocked me that man could come this low to eradicate the whole people from the surface of the earth and i want palestinians to realize that the whole trip i mean the whole experience i was thinking all the time about jews as human it doesn't mean that if we learn about the holocaust that we will not demand our rise or losing our national identity understanding the holocaust made me understand better our conflict i realized that coming back will not be easy because here we are breaking a big taboo we are challenging the collective narrative of the palestinian regarding the holocaust people started to boycott me and attacked me and saying that i'm trying to sell the palestinians design story however when they saw that i was i did not keep silent and i defended it they created an environment of terror around me my car was torched it was an assassination attempt i was watching it and thinking that this will not deter me from going on because it is our moral duty that our children will inherit a better future when we announced the trip more than 70 students applied and one who was a hamas leader was not allowed by the israelis to take the flight to poland i asked him why did you want to go and he said knowledge and i would like to know i don't like to be ignorant of what has happened so basically i think that's hopian in the and people my name is mohammed dejani daudi and i believe in moral college believes in moral courage it's a hero someone who stands up for what's right it's the holocaust it's a day that we have to remember people around us to me the holocaust the holocaust members day is always about my grandparents and the heroes that they are we can never forget about the story you cannot forget about the horrors but we also can never forget that we are now the products of the heroism of those few who survived and decided to make the world a better place to rebuild and to build they decided to not cast their judaism to the side but to stay strong and stay proud and we're the beneficiaries of that and so it puts a burden of responsibility on all of us how we gonna carry the torch if we grew up in a world that they didn't and we have more opportunities than they had what are we gonna do with it because we have to make them proud the holocaust is not just a day in history it's a day about our future it emboldens us and empowers us to recognize how strong we are and how much we have to carry on in their sake in many ways that's what shabbat is supposed to do too it reminds us there's a bigger world out there it pulls us out of the mundanity of life and reminds us to be big to think big we're partners in creation with god what are we gonna do about it the holocaust reminds us that we can there's a few people here that survived and helped rebuild the world what are we gonna do what are me and you gonna do to carry that torch forward so on behalf of me and mine to you and yours wish you a shabbat shalom may this be a shabbat that's filled with purpose where we recognize and respect the past but we use it to only make us stronger towards the future i hope and i pray that next week we get to this in jerusalem but if not i hope to see you back here next week and may the memories of all those victims be a blessing thank you michael for that may their souls be elevated and may they all be looking down from heaven right now and be proud of who we are i'm proud of who we're going to become because of them a good weekend a good shabbos and shabbat [Music] um [Music] this [Music] foreign [Music] uh [Music] me [Music] hey [Music] you