The New York Times, April 14, 2013, By Topaz Adizes
April 15 marks the 68th anniversary of Branko Lustig’s liberation from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when he was not quite 13 years old. In this Op-Doc video, we follow Mr. Lustig back to Poland to visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps (where he was also interned) and to celebrate the bar mitzvah he could never have as a young man.
Between these pivotal moments in his life, Mr. Lustig became one of the most accomplished producers in Hollywood. He won best picture Academy Awards for producing “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” and also worked on Volker Schlöndorff’s epic German World War II tale “The Tin Drum” as well as “Sophie’s Choice,” “War and Remembrance” and “The Winds of War.”
The arc of Mr. Lustig’s life — from Holocaust survivor to Oscar winner — is one of remarkable triumph. While many people shy away from revisiting their personal traumas, Mr. Lustig — in his feature films and in my short documentary — has enabled us all to reflect upon them and, perhaps, come to terms with them.
Topaz Adizes is a New York-based filmmaker whose documentaries and narrative films have played at festivals including Cannes, Sundance, South by Southest and Cinéma du Réel. He is currently developing a narrative feature film, “Close Enough.”
View Clip about Academy Award Winner Branko Lustig’s return to Auschwitz on the March of the Living”: http://nyti.ms/159f7LG
The song was written and performed by Vadim Drezyin a participant in the 1988 March of the Living. The chorus of the song, “to live with honour and to die with honour…” was taken from the last letter of Emmanuel Ringleblum, the famous Jewish historian of the Warsaw Ghetto. He observed in these last words, that the spirit of those who resisted the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, was to “live with honour and die with honour.
Ringleblum was murdered a week after he wrote those words.
Dan Kanter, musical director and guitar player for Justin Bieber, made an emotional visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau earlier this week during Justin Bieber’s 2013 European Believe Tour stop in Poland.
The trip was organized by the March of the Living, an international educational institution dedicated to teaching the lessons of the Holocaust and to combatting prejudice, intolerance and hate.
“I just walked from Auschwitz to Birkenau - It’s been very intense and emotional today,” the acclaimed guitarist said, after visiting the world’s largest and most notorious former death camp, where over 1 million innocent men, women and children – the vast majority Jews- were gassed to death, during the Nazi Holocaust. (more…)
Australian Jewish News, By Phoebe Roth, March 19, 2013
Businessman and philanthropist Frank Lowy. Photo: Henry Benjamin.
BUSINESSMAN, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor Frank Lowy will deliver a keynote address at this year’s March of the Living (MOTL), which coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The annual event, which is running for its 25th year, is set to bring more than 10,000 students, adults and survivors from around the world to Auschwitz-Birkenau on Yom Hashoah next month. (more…)
2013 March of the Living to Honour Physical and Spiritual Resistance
Hugo Lowy story to play central role in Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony as world marks 70th anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Spiritual Resistance to be one of its major themes as program marks its 25th year.
This year’s March of the Living will coincide with the anniversary of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during which a small band of Jewish fighters held off their German attackers for more than a month, after they had planned to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto in three days. While the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising represents physical resistance, a keynote address on spiritual resistance will be delivered by Frank Lowy, a renowned Jewish leader, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, who now lives in Sydney, Australia. (more…)
Michael Bulik, left, and Matylda Liro, second from right, both grandchildren of Righteous Among the Nations, received awards for their grandparents’ bravery. Sally Wasserman, second from left, and Anita Ekstein, right, who were hidden children, presented the awards.
Two grandchildren of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations – Matylda Liro, a Polish journalist in the United States, and Michael Bulik, who operates a Mississauga bakery – were honoured recently at Congregation Habonim in Toronto. They were presented with awards by the March of the Living for their grandparents’ heroism during the Holocaust.
Anita Ekstein and Sally Wasserman, who were both saved by Polish Righteous Gentiles during the Holocaust era, presented the awards. (more…)
The Canadian Jewish News, December 14, 2012, Ilan Mester, Special to The CJN
Shawna Samuel, left, a co-founder of the Dinner of Miracles; Rick Carrier, centre, a U.S. soldier who helped liberate prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp, and Sherri Ettedgui, a dinner co-founder.
TORONTO — The Dinner of Miracles has been bringing Holocaust survivors and young adults from Toronto’s Jewish community together for the past eight years.
The annual event gives guests in their 20s and 30s the opportunity to interact with survivors and hear their stories first-hand. (more…)
Last week, at the invitation of International March of the Living (MOTL), I traveled to Poland to perform at the Holocaust memorial ceremony, held in Auschwitz- Birkenau. In addition to playing at the Auschwitz ceremony, I performed at a concert honoring the liberators who were the first to enter concentration camps and discover Nazi atrocities. I also visited sites around Poland, including the mass graves near Tykocin and the Treblinka concentration camp.
As I flew back to the USA, I found that I was at a loss for words. Without a doubt, this was one of the most profoundly moving weeks of my life, yet at the same time I didn’t quite know what to say. (more…)
It was a breathtaking winter day – we were standing in the middle of a pristine body of water, on the thick, solid ice of Maple Lake, near Parry Sound, Ontario, breathing in the fresh, bracing winter air, and the extraordinary scenery. We were all entranced by the exquisitely blue sky, the snow tipped trees glistening in the mid-day sun, and the endless carpet of untouched snow that covered the lake. (more…)
Since 1955, Yad Vashem has worked to fulfill its mandate to preserve the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust by collecting their names, the ultimate representation of a person’s identity. Millions of victims remain unidentified. Yad Vashem urgently calls upon Jewish communities to recover their names through a worldwide Names Recovery Project. Unless we assume collective responsibility for completing this vital mission, some of them may be lost forever. This is a race against time, before those who remember them are no longer with us.
The Forward, March 15, 2013, By Austin Ratner Even as it was happening, some appear to have understood the Holocaust as a new chapter in the old biblical story of the Exodus: The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto began, history books tell us, on Passover eve, April 1943. The Passover holiday has certainly apprehended that [...]
Haaretz, May 12, 2013, By David B. Green Shmuel Zygielbojm gave up his own life as a symbol of frustration at the Allies’ inaction in the face of the slaughter of the Jews. On May 12, 1943, Shmuel Zygielbojm, one of two Jewish members of the Polish government in exile in London, killed himself, in [...]
The New York Times, April 14, 2013, By Topaz Adizes April 15 marks the 68th anniversary of Branko Lustig’s liberation from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when he was not quite 13 years old. In this Op-Doc video, we follow Mr. Lustig back to Poland to visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps (where he was also [...]
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Selected Quotes from Past Participants
I was definitely moved by what the survivors had to say in general. I believe that they are a crucial part of the March of the Living experience.
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