Film features artists in the Holocaust

A film capturing the experiences of artists who survived the Holocaust gave 250 patrons of the Miami Jewish Film Festival an uplifting message of survival through the arts.

By Maria Arroyave The Miami Herald

At the age of 9, Nazis took Judith Goldstein to the Vilna Ghetto, separating her from her father and brother, and forcing her into a life of torture and fear during the Holocaust. She and her mother spent four years at Vilna and the Stutthof Concentration Camp.

Her experience later would inspire her painting ''Vilna Ghetto,'' one of hundreds of pieces of art by Goldstein that depict the injustices suffered by millions during the Holocaust.

''I paint the canvases of my childhood and sing the images that I see,'' said Goldstein to an audience who had come to view a film about artists who survived the Holocaust and later chronicled their suffering into art.

In addition to several traveling art exhibits, Goldstein is featured in the film, As Seen Though These Eyes, a documentary based on hundreds of interviews that writer, director and producer Hilary Helstein conducted during her work with Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

''This film is the future of art, the next generation. They tried to silence us, and this is our voice carrying,'' Goldstein said.

Thus far, the film has traveled to audiences across the globe -- from Jerusalem to San Diego, Argentina to Poland.

The two-hour program, including the film and speakers, screened at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at Sunrise Cinemas, Intracoastal Mall, 3701 NE 163rd St. at Sunny Isles Boulevard, as part of the 11th annual Miami Jewish Film Festival.

''Art has always resonated on a different level; it's a very visceral experience,'' said Helstein, who is working closely with the Sundance channel to get the film aired on national television.

Helstein is also working to create an ''educational DVD'' to be distributed throughout schools nationwide.

''Everybody can interpret art and it helps us understand that there is a deeper story to communicate,'' she said.

Ellen Wedner, director of the Miami Jewish Film Festival, applauded Helstein's work.

''Hilary took a very unique approach. People used the arts to survive,'' Wedner said.

''Through their stories we can observe the Holocaust, memorialize it and go forward with a life-affirming message,'' Wedner said.

The film also includes Aaron Simon Gross, 13, for his involvement in the 2006 Broadway play Brundibar, an adaptation of the camp opera performed in the ''model ghetto'' camp, Theresienstadt.

The camp falsely led outsiders to believe that Jewish people were receiving education and cultural enrichment. Of 15,000 children who were sent to live there, only 100 survived.

Aaron, who lives in Boca Raton, sang four songs from the play and shared his feelings with the audience.

''It is just so moving and fascinating,'' he said of the opera, ``how much they went through to put it on.''

Following the film and presentation, only a few in the audience left the theater.

''I couldn't catch my breath,'' said Holocaust survivor Riva Bernstein. ``I felt I was falling apart because I lived it. I was in it.''

Some, like Eva Uszerowicz, who is visiting her son in Sunrise from Brooklyn, stood with tears in their eyes.

''It was just so touching, so incredibly powerful,'' said Uszerowicz, 85, who was taken to a concentration camp when she was 18.

Inside the dimly lit cinema, Uszerowicz extended her arm to Helstein, pulling up her sleeve to reveal several poorly etched numbers and letters in the crook of her elbow.

Uszerowicz said only one word: ``Auschwitz.''

''It is important that there are films that can change humanity,'' Helstein said.

``That we both understand the experience and see that under the worst possible circumstances, the human spirit will rise.''

Back to the As Seen Through These Eyes movie page.