My sister-in-law phoned last night. "Turn on PBS," she said.
My husband was reluctant to abanndon the movie he was watching--a mediocre flick in which twenty-first-century characters travel back in time to save medieval knights and ladies. His reluctance evaporated as soon as we caught a glimpse of "Hiding and Seeking," a documentary filmed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky.
It's a powerful and powerfully told story that spans generations, continents, cultures. It's about Daum and his wife Rivka, Orthodox Jewish children of Holocaust surviors; about their sons; about Rivka's widowed, elderly father, whose Yiddish and intonations and economy of words brought a wave of memories of my father, of blessed memory. It's about the Polish gentiles wo saved Rivka's father's life. Ultimately, it's a story of connections, of bridges formed, of hope.
From the synoposis on the film's web site:
Hiding and Seeking tells the story of a father who tries to alert his adult Orthodox Jewish sons to the dangers posed by defenders of the faith who preach intolerance of the "other," by those who feel compelled to create impenetrable barriers between "us" and "them."
To broaden their narrow and insular views he takes them on a highly charged emotional journey to Poland. To his sons, like many offspring of Polish Holocaust survivors, this is a country whose people are incurably anti-Semitic and beyond redemption. It is precisely here that he introduces his sons to Poles who personify the highest levels of exemplary behavior.
The highlight of their journey comes when they manage to track down the Polish farm family who risked their lives to hide the sons' grandfather for more than two years during the Holocaust. This encounter and its tumultuous aftermath lead the sons to at least consider their father’s viewpoint more seriously.
The film--and the Daum family journey--raises thoughtful and at times painful questions. When Rivka meets the woman whose parents saved her father's life--mentally sharp, but now so hunched that her back is almost parallel to the ground--she thanks her for her family's exceptional act of courage.
But the old woman is aggrieved. "Why didn't he [the grandfather] send a postcard?" Why total silence, after her parents had risked their lives to save his?
Rivka, eyes tearing, tells the old woman her father regrets not having stayed in touch. The old woman gracioulsy accepts the apology; a while later she speaks to Rivka's father on a cell-phone. But for Daum, the father, there is more to learn. He urges his sons to ask their grandfather "why." And when, back in Brooklyn, they do ask, the grandfather is sad with remorse.
The grandsons show him a digital photo of the old woman, captured on the screen of their laptop.
"Zi iz gevein a sheinheh," the grandfather said.
She was a pretty girl.
Cell phones connecting Brooklyn and Dzialoszyce in Poland; an elderly, white-bearded Holocaust survivor peering at a face from the past on a lap top.
Traveling back to a dark time, looking ahead to a brighter tomorrow...
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