The Portland Northwest Film Center and The Portland Institute for Jewish Studies recently hosted Julie Kohner and theUCLA Festival of Preservation for a showing of “This Is Your Life” on January 15, 2012.  The three episodes once again featured Holocaust survivor’s stories, and Julie as the guest speaker for an introductory talk about her mother, Hanna Bloch Kohner, one of three guests, and the first Holocaust survivor to have her story told to a national television audience,  and a follow up question & answer session. This was a very memorable evening.

We are excited to share the Dec 2011 Voices of the Generations newsletter with you.  The newsletter is at this link VOGNewsletter-Dec2011 .  We encourage you to down load it and pass it along to others who may be interested.  From our board of directors, and myself, we wish you happy holidays and thank you for your continued support.

Julie Kohner and Robert Albanese, Director of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.

UCLA Festival of Preservation brought This Is Your Life, Holocaust Survivors to The Ridge Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, November 20, 2011, as the closing film of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.  Julie Kohner, was the invited guest speaker, and presented an introduction toVoices of the Generations and the This Is Your Life presentation.  Audience members engaged in a question & answer session after This Is Your Life, Hanna Bloch Kohner. Special thanks go to Mr. Jim Sinclair from the Pacific Cinematheque, and Mr. Robert Albanese, director of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, for hosting this special event.

Look for Voices of the Generations at the Jewish Film Festival on January 15, 2012 in Portland, Oregon.

The Luire Cave, in the Vercors region of south-central France was the scene of a desperate, yet heroic fight between hospitalized French Resistance fighters and German soldiers battling the onslaught of the Allied Invasion in July 1944. It was here that a brief roadside stop on a recent driving tour of this serene mountainous region near the Rhone River Valley led to my discovery of another element in the effort to defeat Naziism.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance): The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi occupiers of France and against the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II. Résistance cells were small groups of armed men and women who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The men and women of the Résistance came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including emigres, conservative Roman Catholics, including priests; members of the Jewish community; and citizens from the ranks of liberals, anarchists, and communists.

In the region of Saint-Agnan-en Vercors, a medical service was set up in February 1944. A hospital for 60 patients, and several medical aid stations for French Resistance and Allied combat forces were established in the region.  In mid-July 1944, the Nazis launched a vast operation in the region.  Nearly 100 wounded resistance fighters in the hospital at Saint Martin-en-Vercors had to be evacuated, and were taken to the Luire cave, deep in the forest outside of town. With the German attacks intensifying, the least wounded fled into the forest. On July 27, German soldiers arrived at the cave, and in spite of the Red Cross sign, started shooting the remaining hospital patients. Some patients were executed on site, others taken as prisoners to Grenoble. Doctors, nurses and other medical staff were deported to Ravensbruck.

September 27, 2011, was the start of a memorable day as part of my recent visit to Paris, France.  I met with Fabrice Teicher and Jacques-Olivier David of the Memorial de la Shoah (http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/getHomeAction.do?langage=en) to discuss and share Holocaust education ideas.  The Memorial sponsors international, teacher training, and specialized educational programs for school age children as young as age 8. It was a great opportunity to meet both Fabrice and Jacques- Olivier, we discussed the possibility of Voices of the Generations making a future presentation at the Memorial.  When Hanna & Walter, A Love Story (https://vogcharity.org/vog/hanna-walter-a-love-story-2/) was first published in 1984, it was translated into several languages including French.  It is my hope to someday have the book translated again, and available to French speaking students and the public as a personal account of my parents story. We also hope to find support for translation of the Hanna & Walter curriculum into French (currently available in English and German.)

This Is Your Life, Hanna Bloch Kohner was presented on October 5, 2011, at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.  A wonderful blog post, written by Jan Lisa Huttner, discussing the event and the episode can be read here: http://www.juf.org/news/blog.aspx?id=412639&blogid=13573.  This is another stop for  the UCLA Film and Television Archive Festival of Preservation.

UCLA Festival of Preservation brought This Is Your Life, Holocaust Survivors to the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAM PFA) at the University of California, Berkeley on Sunday, September 18.  Julie Kohner, was the invited guest speaker, and presented an introduction toVoices of the Generations and the This Is Your Life presentation.  Audience members engaged in a question & answer session after This Is Your Life, Hanna Bloch Kohner.

Look for Voices of the Generations at the Jewish Film Festival on November 20, 2011 in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Pacific Cinematheque.

Thank you to Alejandra Espansande and Cinecito Productions for this wonderful short subject film about Voices of the Generations.  This is an important step in keeping the memories and the stories alive.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC  recently hosted the UCLA Festival of Preservation film series. Among the restored films presented on Sunday, August 14, 2011 were episodes of This Is Your Life, featuring the life stories of three Holocaust survivors, Hanna Kohner, Ilsa Stanley, and Sara Veffer.

Joanna Raczynska, from the National Gallery of Art Department of Film Programs, provided an overview of the programs and introduced Julie Kohner, founder of  Voices of the Generations.  Julie presented introductory remarks, and led a discussion afterwards. Among the questions raised, was one by a member of the audience who wanted to know how the sponsor of This Is Your Life agreed to support a television program on such a topic, eight years after the end of the war.  This is a question that deserves an answer, as even in our time of open media, questions are asked as to what is appropriate or not.

Photo above is from This Is Your Life, Sara Veffer.  Mrs. Veffer is shown sitting center.

Julie had the pleasure to meet Carolynne Veffer, visiting from Toronto, Canada, and granddaughter of Sara Veffer, one of the three subjects of the “This Is Your Life” programs featuring Holocaust Survivors.

Special thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC for hosting this event, and to the Ralph & Barbara Edwards Family Foundation and UCLA Film and TV Archive for making this travel possible.