I first heard about Janet R. Kirchheimer and her project to
make BE*HOLD, a documentary focusing on poetry dealing with the Holocaust, this last
summer. I was immediately interested in the focus of this work and the
possibilities that it raised for understanding how people respond to the
Holocaust and how they respond to writing and art about the Holocaust. As I've given poetry readings about
my parents' experiences as Polish slave laborers, I've often felt that poetry
has the ability to communicate the meaning and experience of the terrible
things that happened like no other medium.
I asked Janet to write about her project so that I could
post it here.
After you read it, please take a look at the progress reel for the documentary. Just click
HERE, and when asked for the password, type in the word: perform
Janet R. Kirchheimer
Writing the
Holocaust Through Film
My parents are eating dinner in
a Jerusalem hotel. Their waiter asks where they live. My mother tells him,
“America.” The waiter says, “You should come to live in Israel because it’s
home.” My father tells him, “Home is anywhere they let you in.”
Born in a small town in Southern
Germany, my father hid, along with his parents, older sister and younger
brother, in the basement of their home during Kristallnacht. The next morning,
on November 10, 1938, he was ordered to report to town hall. Along with nine other
men, he was arrested and sent to Dachau. He was sixteen years old. My
mother, also born in Germany, was six years old when she was backed up against
a wall at school in 1936. Her classmates threw rocks at her because she refused
to say “Heil Hitler.” Her parents got her out to a Jewish girls’ orphanage in
Amsterdam, the Israelitisch Meijesweeshuis. She was one of one hundred and four
girls. Four survived. My mother came to America with her parents
and an older sister. In 1942, my father’s parents, sister and brother
were deported to Westerbork, and then to Auschwitz and killed upon
arrival.
I consider myself lucky.
My parents answered all my questions about the Shoah and what happened to their
families. Some of my friends told me their parents refused. I don’t make
any judgments. When I was a child, I remember visiting a friend of my
father who was from his hometown. They would stand off in a corner
speaking about the Shoah in low voices, and would stop when I came by.
But I wanted to know. In my teens, I asked what happened. My father
and I made lists of the transports of Jews from his town. We talked about
Kristallnacht and Dachau; about the watercress his mother planted each spring
near the house and used as a border around the Kartoffel salat (potato
salad); how his younger brother wrote in one of his last letters, “with God’s
help, we will get to America.” My mother sang me “The Song of Lorelei”
one night at the kitchen table; she told me she had to come back into Germany
from Holland in 1937 to get her visa from the American Consulate and that she
only spoke Dutch and could barely communicate with her mother; how her mother
threw out her gold and silver jewelry from the window of a train after the
Nazi Government ordered Jews to turn it in, saving only her wedding ring; and her
father who walked home in the blizzard of ’47, collapsed and died in her
mother’s arms.
Holding these stories for years,
I took a poetry workshop and began writing. I didn’t stop for over
fifteen years. In 2007, my book, How to Spot One of Us, was
published. I’ve given many readings and taught using my book at a wide
variety of venues. Each time I speak in a school, I am asked by a student
why it is important to remember the Holocaust, an event that happened so long ago.
I tell them because, “We still keep killing each other.” I use my family
stories and poetry as a springboard for a discussion about the Shoah and
current genocides.
Writer and child survivor
Aharon Appelfeld stated, “After the death of the last witnesses, the
remembrance of the Holocaust must not be entrusted to historians alone.
Now comes the hour of artistic creation.” I met film director
RichardKroehling at a conference. We discussed our mutual love of poetry and, within a few
weeks, we decided to make BE•HOLD. The film presents poetry written by
survivors, their descendants, and Jews and non-Jews grappling with the Shoah
and its aftereffects. Presented by poets, survivors, actors and people from all
walks of life, BE•HOLD creates a deep well of voices responding to
evil. We want to make BE•HOLD to honor the murdered, the survivors and
those who rose up against the Nazis. The team making the film is Richard
Kroehling who directed “A. Einstein: How I See the World” for PBS The American
Masters Series, and cinematographer Lisa Rinzler, a multi-award winning
cinematographer, and I am producer.
.
Jane Hirschfield
wrote,
“Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being,” and Robert
Altman said, “
Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.” BE•HOLD brings the viewer into the
lives of the poets and the performers. Richard and I believe that the
language of poetry and the language of cinema can be brought together for
profound and powerful results. During each filming, we watched poetry and
cinema collide and recorded what happened. Each time something unexpected
happened, and it was magical to see it unfold. Each poem has its own
visual island. Capturing a wide range of experiences, viewers’ lives will
resonate with the poet’s, allowing them to engage with history through a
vibrant and contemporary lens. In BE•HOLD, language becomes a character. The
film is designed as a poetic anthology like Wim Wender’s dance anthology film
“Pina.” Viewers will follow each performer into a time when good and evil, life
and death walked the razor’s edge. It is our hope that new personal meanings
for the audience will emerge out of the juxtaposition of the poems, the unique
approach to each piece, the performances, cinematography, music and uses of
sound and silence.
Wilfred Owen wrote of
his WWI poetry: “My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the
pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They
may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn.” When the survivors are
gone, we will need new ways to ensure Holocaust memory for future
generations. BE•HOLD will be a living legacy, and an innovative way to
remember in a world still rife with genocide. The film imparts the ongoing
relevance of the Shoah: that the past is not simply in the past, but rather a
vital part of the present and future.
BE•HOLD is being
incubated at Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. We
are forming an Advisory Board for the film. Advisors are poets Mary
Stewart Hammond and Edward Hirsch, as well as Rabbi Irving (Yitz)
Greenberg, Chairman Emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Council. Our
progress reel features renowned spoken
word poet Taylor Mali, Pulitzer Prize nominated poet Cornelius Eady, and me,
along with my mother. Please note that it has not been fine edited yet. The
password for the video is: perform
We recently received a
challenge grant. If we raise $15,000, we will receive another $10,000
which will enable us to go into production. We’ve raised half so far, and
are accepting contributions to meet this challenge. Donations can be made by
clicking on the link below and filling out the section that says “Special Purpose
and Dedication” with BEHOLD. All contributions are tax deductible. Just click
HERE.
