This program supported, in part, by the Bernard & Rochelle Zell Center for Holocaust Studies at Spertus.
This program is being held in conjunction with the exhibition Anne Frank: A History for Today at Spertus Museum.
The movie's running time is 27:33
Documentary filmmaker and Academy-Award winner Sue Marx called A is for Auschwitz "beautifully sad and incredibly moving" while rich in "delicious humanity." The Jewish News said that "it is their honesty, the matter-of-fact telling of the horrors they encountered, that is so moving…" The Detroit Free Press praised the "tender, unblinking detail" of the filmmaker's storytelling.
Concerts, Comedy, Plays, Film
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) Commemoration
- A is for Auschwitz
- Sunday, April 30, 2006 2 pm
- Free
- For reservations call 312.322.1743 or email rsvp@spertus.edu
Filmmaker Zach Smilovitz (center) with his grandparents, Rita and Izidor.
A little more than a year ago (at age sixteen), Zach Smilovitz of suburban Detroit interviewed his grandparents, Holocaust survivors Izidor and Rita Smilovitz, for a high school film project. Shot on a small digital camera over one weekend, the film he created features the couple sharing details of their experiences in Czechoslovakia, the atrocities committed against them, and their survival from the trenches of forced labor to the horrors of Auschwitz. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Zach’s film introduced his father, Bernie (a prominent sportscaster in Detroit), to a chapter of his parents' lives he had never really understood. Growing up, all Bernie knew was that his parents were Holocaust survivors. It took his own son’s film to teach him exactly what that meant. "When I first saw it, I started crying because it was stuff I had never heard," says Bernie.
Bernie and Zach's story was featured on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. The film has since gone on to receive several prestigious awards. Join us as we welcome Zach and Bernie Smilovitz to Spertus for the first Chicago screening of A is for Auschwitz, followed by a remarkable discussion with both of them.