The are so few left

It's hard to believe that it has been ten years already. It seems as if it was only yesterday when an announcement in the daily Yediot Aharonot was looking for volunteers to interview Holocaust survivors in order to preserve their testimonies. I was aware that Yad Vashem was collecting testimonies but this announcement was given by the "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation”, founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994. A year after his famous "Schindler's List” appeared, they were looking for volunteers in Israel, preferably people who spoke foreign languages

As for my family, my Father was the only survivor of a forced labor camp in Northern Moldova whom could give answers and testimony regarding those years. My Mother and Grandmother, who passed away in 1984 and 1990, were deported to Transnistria, and I could only vaguely remember the very few things that they told me. They wanted me to grow up without resentments, totally unaffected by the cruel reality they had lived through, somewhere far away, as if on another planet, a planet where hatred, humiliation and crime reigned. I've read "The Death Factory", "The Black Book", and “I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz". I still felt so far away from understanding the sufferings of my parents' generation, the terrible things they had to endure, the permanent and obsessive presence of death, and the courage to face it and overcome it. After becoming an immigrant in 1970 in Israel, I watched many movies and read many books. My family however seldom told me about the Holocaust. If they did, it was with a detached attitude, in scarce words and with no details.

Finally, I decided to contact the Spielberg Foundation, and I attended an intensive course offered by the Foundation itself. The courses covered the history and geography of the pre and post-war period, a course about Judaism and the meaning of the Holidays within local traditions, about the structure of the Jewish communities, and about the events that preceded the implementation of racial laws in different countries. And of course, it also included information regarding World War II, about the Holocaust, concentration and extermination camps, and about how the unbelievable could happen (the murder of 6,000,000 Jews - men, women, aged people and children whose only guilt was being Jewish). Hundreds of volunteers came for the training course. It was as if each one of them had the same wish, to clear and close an invisible circle and yet engrave on their souls and minds a never ending imaginary dialogue with their parents. Most of them were descendents of the survivors of the most despicable crimes in human history. By the end of the course, only a few dozen of well-trained people remained for this monumental Project. I also had not as yet met any other person who spoke Romanian. The course taught us how to make video interviews. These interviews would be in an archive containing more than 50,000 testimonies. These archives are available to historians, families of those who perished in the Holocaust, students or anybody who wishes to investigate this dark period and its consequences. The clearly defined purpose of the Project was, to not forget, and to leave for the following generations eloquent testimonies of the sufferings of the survivors as well as a firm but optimistic message that these horrors must never be repeated. The Foundation had its main establishment and its archives in Los Angeles, California. Numerous offices existed in many countries. The interviews were duplicated for Yad Vashem (Jerusalem), the Museum of the Holocaust (Washington), The Simon Wiesenthal Center (Los Angeles), The Video Fortunoff Archive (Yale University-New Haven) and The Museum of Jewish Heritage (New York).

Each interview would last about three hours, and was divided into five or six cassettes of thirty minutes, each on a continuous video tape without any post-edits. The shooting was spontaneous, usually in the homes of the people who were ready to tell their personal stories, recapturing moments from their own and their family's lives before the war, through the entire war and after the defeat of the Nazi troops. The structure of the interview was slightly rigid with twenty percent of the time being dedicated to the pre-war period. Sixty percent concentrated on the Holocaust and on the reconstruction of the tragedy of the person interviewed. Twenty percent was kept for the post-war period, the presentation of photographs, artifacts, documents, and the family of the survivors. The camera was mostly in one position, keeping a close-up on the main character's facial expressions. The person who took the interview would be filmed only at the very beginning. The last part of the interview included the survivor's message; his belief in the future, images of the descendants, the details about his life in Israel after immigration, and sometimes had the privilege of reuniting his whole family.

For me personally, the course itself became an unforgettable lesson. I realized how poor my knowledge about the Holocaust was, how little I knew about the events that happened in different corners of "civilized " Europe regarding the ruthless massacres, about how little each one's life mattered, how with such absurd normality events unfolded, how anti-Semitism turned into racial laws, pogroms, mass assassinations, and finally statistics. Figures tell so little about the individual tragedy of the victims, about how easily people were liquidated, tortured, humiliated and mocked at by those with whom they had shared a childhood with, but who suddenly turned into executioners.

The moment I started out on this strenuous road of interviewing, I soon realized that the most difficult part was the very first encounter. During the so-called pre-interview, interviewed persons were asked to point out as accurately as possible, dates, places, important events, information about their families mentioning names, age, and revealing as many minute details as possible in order to cross check the testimonies and to establish objective historical truth.
I was given a long questionnaire of many pages. I had to fill out as precisely as possible, with long forgotten details, a document which would expose the interviewed person to considerable physical and psychological effort, mostly because of their advanced age, and because of the difficulties that came up in remembering each detail in its right time and place. For about two years, starting from 1995, about twice a month, sometimes more frequently, even weekly, I would arrange an appointment with a survivor after receiving data from the Jerusalem office. I would arrive as early as possible immediately after my working hours, knowing that the first meeting would be the key to our future communication and to the final success of the interview. The discussion would usually develop in Hebrew. Some of these people had already written autobiographies, which they offered to me after the pre-interview which lasted about two hours. I would return home drained, out of energy, haunted by macabre images. I tried to avoid showing any reaction at this first meeting, and to not allow it to hinder the spontaneity of the interview itself. Each evening I would wonder why I took upon myself such a difficult task. What was it that motivated me into this Project, what dialogue was I trying to clarify with myself, with the past and with my family? Each time I would find a different answer, which turned into a new question the next day. I would have difficulties going to sleep. I would dream about places where I had never been, but I was pulled there by the painful words of my new acquaintances.

Most of my interviews were with survivors from Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Ukraine. These were people who had been in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Treblinka or in the ghettoes. They had escaped by risking their lives and leaving behind brothers, mothers, relatives, and friends, all of whom were either incinerated in a crematorium, shot either by the German military or their allies, or let to die either by starvation, typhus, or misery. Others died by being thrown into train wagons, by suffocation, were dehumanized, or underwent the most excruciating and unimaginable tortures.

The Spielberg Foundation was excellently organized. The first sum of money was donated by Steven Spielberg himself, (about fourteen million dollars, I think) to which other substantial financial support was given by industrial companies, actors, politicians, and personalities from different corners of the world who expressed their full support to the Spielberg's Project. The leading team from the United States, Michael Berenbaum, Ari Zeev, and Michael Engel were highly qualified, devoted and energetic, just like Bill Steinberg and Diana Wisemann, who were in charge of the production. The Jerusalem office coordinator was Shoshana, who worked full time. It was like a well-oiled mechanism racing against time because the number of those who could testify would become less and less each and every day. The most substantial contribution however was done by the interviewing team, the ants who were wandering in different countries to do the interviews, to reveal and to leave for posterity as much data as possible.

In spite of the difficult beginnings, my cooperation with the photographers became more and more symbiotic. I became very perceptive to the rhythm of the dialogues, and didn’t need the slightest tap on my shoulder to realize that there were only two minutes left till the end of the video tape and thus the need to change to a new one. As for me and the survivors, friendships were slowly born between us. They were calling me sometimes after the interview, thanking me for offering them the opportunity to tell out loud things which they could never share even with their children. They would even let me know about different family events, and they also kept me posted about the time they got a copy of the tape, asking me to thank the Spielberg Foundation for their valuable Project. I would wander through Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Givatayim, Ra'anana, Holon, Nathania, Kfar Saba, and sometimes Jerusalem. After each interview, I would feel consumed and relieved at the same time due to the interaction with people carrying an everlasting pain in their souls, a pain that nothing could ever erase, but to whom I could offer a few hours through which they could face their past, reliving their personal tragedies. They also relived their triumph over death, and felt the joy of being able to leave for their descendants their terrifying experiences. Their expressions and sad eyes, often full of tears, would accompany me, but at the same time there was always a glimpse of hope in them.

I felt that I was being useful to others, that I was giving a part of myself to an ideal, to a purpose which I shared with thousands of people who were wandering just like me from place to place, to collect the last bits of memory of a generation at dusk. The interviews became more and more fluent and dramatic. I would even allow myself to step a bit out of the original pattern, asking the photographers to add an artistic aspect to the interview, suggesting to them to sometimes change the position of the camera, to move it from time to time thus creating a more intimate atmosphere or a more dynamic dialogue.

As coincidence would have it, I once arrived at the home of a rabbi from Bney Brak who seemed to be reluctant to communicate, and in spite of all my persistence, he stubbornly kept on giving evasive answers making it impossible for me to cover the requested historical facts. He would not reveal anything personal. He would lose or interrupt the flow of the story. He would confuse dates and places so that the three interviewing hours passed by inertly, leaving me with a strong feeling of failure. I left his home greatly disappointed in myself and feeling, after huge efforts, a need to take a break from this Sisyphean challenge, or to even give up my further activity within the Project. The next day, I called the Jerusalem office asking for a break of a month, pleading for a very difficult period at my clinic. After about three weeks, I received a phone call from one of the Directors of the Foundation in the Los Angeles Center telling me that after watching, in English, my interview with the rabbi from Bney Brak, Spielberg and his team became very enthusiastic and praised the way in which I succeeded to squeeze out precious information from somebody who was so unresponsive.

The aim: tell the future generations…

As far as I was concerned, I didn't achieve my mission, but the Director I was having the phone conversation with assured me that they had watched all my video interviews, and recognized their elevated level. They felt they should intervene at that particular moment because they witnessed the difficulties I was facing. They were impressed by the way I overcame them, and wanted to express their appreciation for my abilities and perseverance. I felt overwhelmed and flattered and despite the compliments, still lacked a confidence in my own abilities. I shared these doubts with my partner in the dialogue. In just a few words, he succeeded to rally me. I sensed the sincerity in his voice, and the wish that I should keep working on the Project. I then took the opportunity and reminded him that there still existed in Israel, survivors of the forced labor camps from Romania, people who were deported to Transnistria, just like my Mother and Grandmother's families, and that I had not had any interview in Romanian as of that date.

On the other hand, during the period of the course, I had already suggested to one of the teachers whose grandmother was also deported to Transnistria, not to forget those survivors, and to maybe even open a special office in Bucharest. My suggestion immediately echoed in Los Angeles and Jerusalem. In a short time, I was asked to interview survivors of the extermination camps who had been deported from Transylvania.

I remember the number singed on the arm of a lady from Oradea, who at the time of the interview lived in Pardes Katz (a small town, near Tel Aviv). She sadly told me about the horrifying moments, the loss of her mother in Auschwitz, where the difference between a simple "right" meant labor and “left" meant gas chambers and it became fatal - tearing families, destinies and hopes apart. She used simple words, short sentences, and expressed herself in a nostalgic tone about how her youth was irreversibly traumatized by uniform wearing beasts. It was as if she was in an unreal world - a world which she was reliving in front of my eyes and showing no wish so ever for revenge. She told her story as though she was watching a black and white movie, she accidentally being part of the cast. Yes, she saw Mengele, the Angel of Death. She seemed to smell the smoke of the crematorium from Birkenau. She remembered every bit of detail from the concentration camp, the names of the women and the countries they had come from, and how they would disappear without saying good bye. And in spite of all that, she was optimistic, life thirsty, effervescent, and had plans for the future. A long silence came upon us when the interview reached its end, but then with a brisk movement she stood up, embraced me and kissed me on both my cheeks. From that day on a new friendship was born. She would call me weekly, and would thank me for the opportunity to share this horrible period. After a year, I received a call from her husband telling me that she had passed away and that in the last months she often reminded him of her interview with me, and the feeling of relief she had experienced when revealing the hidden pain.

Another interview that shook me was with a gentleman living in Ramat Gan, an Auschwitz survivor. He would stop at each and every photograph, at every object kept along the years and reflect on their symbolic meaning. His story was built upon small episodes which linked to each other in a cruel scenario. He used to be a cantor in a synagogue in Transylvania. Being the sole survivor of his entire family, his wife was very much concerned about his health. He would often tell her about his parents who burnt to ashes, but he never said a word to his sons. Although I suggested that he brings them to appear in the video, he said he'd rather end the interview with a stirring Song of Prayer. His voice seemed to be shaking the walls of his small apartment, rising to the sky. His desperate prayer kept following me for days afterwards.

A lady, who was born in Bucharest, and who, by the order of the criminal, Marshall Antonescu, was deported at the age of fourteen along with her family to Transnistria in a transport of two hundred and twenty deportees, followed by another seventy, received me in her flat in Holon. I insisted at the Center office in Jerusalem to make this interview in order to leave it for posterity because it was another proof that the Jews of Bucharest as well as the Jews of Bucovina and Moldova had suffered during the war. Out of about 600,000 Jews who were living in Romania before the war, 300,000 were exterminated in the Holocaust. Fifty percent is a shocking statistic but one that tells very little about the personal tragedies! The interview with this lady went along quite smoothly with me, not having to interfere much at all. The lady had already written her memories in a book in Romanian, and translated into German and Hebrew. During the entire shooting the photographer was reading her book, which I had already read. The last minutes of the shooting rested on the image of the face of a fourteen year old teenager who at such an early age came to know the horrors of Transnistria.

The Spielberg Foundation edited an English monthly bulletin called "PastForward". I received this on a regular basis, and from this I could find out the number of the people interviewed all over the world. I could also see that this number was constantly increasing in countries where the Foundation had its offices. The Bulletin included informative material, lists of the donors (Spielberg being a substantial monthly donor), historical accuracies, authentic documents, educational material, and information about the way the archives were organized, including details concerning the division of the work into several departments, letters of the survivors, poems, and useful commentaries. This made us all feel part of this remarkable family. I was in constant communication by phone with the establishment from Jerusalem, sometimes even going to Yad Vashem, to watch different videos. I never received any copies, not even those made by me. Although they used to decide who I was going to interview, my new activity was soon spreading among the Israelis who migrated from Romania. I began receiving more and more phone calls asking me to take testimonies of families originating from Romania. Regretfully, I explained that these decisions were not up to me, and I sent them to Shoshana, the Coordinator of the project in Jerusalem. I still, in some cases, succeeded in advancing the programming of some very aged and sick people.

The most difficult dialogue I had was with my Father, Dr. Benedict Solomon, a Survivor of the Holocaust from Romania, and a deportee in the forced labor camps from Northern Moldova. As a rule and for many reasons, I was not allowed to interview family members. My Father, however, wouldn't hear about anybody else, and so after intensive persuasion on my behalf, the Los Angeles Center approved the interview.

A message which must not be forgotten

The dialogue with my Father was extremely strenuous, being almost impossible for me to guide him on a track previously planned by the Directors of the Foundation. A few years before, my Father had already published a book of poems, "Cry in the Desert" and many of those poems reminded me of the tragedies of our family. Although I was convinced that I knew enough information, it was only then, during the three hour dialogue that I finally realized that most of my Father's family perished in the Holocaust. His voice was shivering, the numerous events were chasing each other, and for the first time he showed an interest in leaving these testimonies for posterity but first of all to me, his Son. He was telling me of his Uncles and Cousins, of his mates in the camp, and about the letters sent in all sorts of entangled ways to my Mother, who was deported to Transnistria. His voice would suddenly fade, as he, who owned such an analytical mind, yet so rational, was losing the chronological order of events. He then would regain his composure, revealing to me details that I never knew, followed by a return back to his childhood, to the racial laws, and to his friends who later turned into criminals. I tried to interrupt the flow of his tales to add some order, but our dialogue became a monologue, a continuous solitary excruciating cry. During one of the tape-changing breaks, the photographer whispered in my ear, “difficult, very difficult ". In 1997, my Father published another volume of poems, "The March of the Shadows", and in 2002, three months before his death, his last volume, "Blood Drops on an Olive Leaf ", both of these volumes included numerous poems from the period of the Holocaust. I believe that due to Spielberg's initiative, my Father set out with great determination and strength to publish his pains deeply hidden and well sealed off in the corners of his soul.

Too late

On the occasion of a cultural evening, I was approached by Yehuda Epstein, whom I had known for some years. He was very active in different aspects of the Israeli public life, and his wife was also a deportee to Transnistria, Ukraine. He asked me to interview his wife, who was already very sick and, feeling the end quite near, had a lot of things to tell. I contacted the Jerusalem offices and immediately received their approval. I felt I was in a competition against time.
I made the appointment for the pre-interview and went to their home in North Tel Aviv where I also met her two sisters (one of them being the well-known Judge Sirota). I had to refuse their participation because I was there just for Mrs. Epstein. Because only one testimony was to be taken at a time, the family could appear only in the last minutes of the interview. The pre-interview went on coherently. She was able to remember the details quite well and even though she had been deported as a young child, the chronological events were thoroughly engraved in her mind, as well as dates, names, and the persons who had disappeared. In less than two hours, we succeeded to scan all the required periods in spite of her fragile health. We decided to have the shooting in one week time but only three days later, Yehuda Epstein told me that her illness had worsened and that she had to be hospitalized. She passed away a few days later, quietly and modestly, just the way she had lived. As for me, this interview which never happened left me with a painful scar on my soul.

The end of the project

About two years after the beginning of the Project in Israel, I found out that an office of the Spielberg Foundation was finally being opened in Bucharest. While I was continuing to do interviews in Israel in Hebrew, I felt like I was running a race against time. I found out that towards the end of the course done by the Foundation in Romania, my interview in Romanian with the lady who was deported to Transnistria from Bucharest, was presented with didactic purposes and that the well-known journalist, Felicia Antip, was also one of the volunteers for the Project. Meanwhile, I was constantly receiving the “PastForward” periodical of the Foundation. I found out that even though the number of the interviewed people around the world was constantly growing, the final goal i.e. 50,000 interviews that the Foundation set out to make, was difficult to achieve. So, the Los Angeles and Jerusalem offices decided in cooperation to hold a marathon in the Northern part of Israel, in which three interviews a day were to be made by each interviewer, three days in a row. Though I was called upon, I couldn't find the necessary resources within me to engage in such a mission. I was told afterwards how extenuating this initiative was, both for the survivors and for the shooting crews. By the end of 1998, the archives already possessed 50,000 video testimonies, from fifty-five countries, and in thirty languages. More than 8,000 were made in Israel. At the end of the same year, I received two letters from Los Angeles, one on behalf of the Director, Michael Berenbaum, and the other one from the production crew. They informed me that the objective of the Project was achieved, and they were thanking me warmly for my effort and devotion. In the near future, they would concentrate on research and archiving for educational purposes. The number of the interviews being conducted was fifteen per week, mostly in Romania, Hungary, and Israel. The Jerusalem Bureau organized a meeting with all those who by their exhausting and meticulous job had contributed to this highly valuable Project. We parted with tearful eyes from the photographers, from the collaborators of the Yad Vashem, and from the colleagues whom we had never seen since the end of the initiating course two years prior. That same day, I received an envelope with a “Certificate of Recognition”, signed, in the name of the Foundation by Steven Spielberg and Michael Berenbaum. Of all the diplomas and honorific titles that I have acquired along the years, this particular one represents for me the most precious memory, the laurels of a tremendous physical, mental and psychological effort, which required time and until then not known energies but which enriched me spiritually beyond all expectations.

A new beginning

Today, the Spielberg Foundation has become a part of the University of Southern California" (USC), its archives containing over 52,000 films, offering a source of information and a profound study for students and researchers. Twelve institutions, among them "The United States Holocaust Museum” from Washington, has direct access to its archives. "The USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education" is managed by Douglas Greenberg, but the initial committee, which established the Foundation, continues its activity of moral and financial support (recently Spielberg donated to it one million dollars), and many of the old participants in the Project contribute today to the process of digitalizing the archives and to promoting educational programs. “PastForward” also continues to be published every trimester. I receive it regularly, probably just like many other long run racers. Just as its name says, the periodical brings into peoples' memories the somber past so that the future generations will know the horrors of the Holocaust, and in hope that they would create a better world, without hate and intolerance.

As for me, the experience of these two years can be defined as a period of unconditional devotion. Often, when I think of it, I relive the emotions I experienced when I met with these wonderful people who suffered horribly, and lost their families and friends in this colossal mechanism of the Jewish genocide. These families nevertheless found within themselves the spiritual resources, the generosity to share the tragic episodes of their lives, and at the same time, believe in the future so that such a thing should never happen again. The generation of the Survivors is about to disappear. In a few years, there won't be anyone belonging to this generation, but their testimonies convey the thread of hope to their descendants.

As a Son of Survivors of the Holocaust from Romania, these exposures made me love my parents even more, made me find answers to questions I had never asked, and caused me to feel my Jewish identity and Israeli affiliation more deeply. For all that, I am grateful to the Spielberg Foundation for the opportunity they offered me, to look straight into the eyes of those who saw hell, and who entrusted me to convey their message. We must not allow humanity to forget, nowhere, no matter which corner of this planet. Never.
We shall never forget.