RESISTANCE – THEY FOUGHT BACK
Thursday, July 25th at 7:15 PM
In-Person: Filmmaker Paula
S. Apsell
Guest Host: Dr. Jud Newborn
$18 Public | $12 Members
“People have this myth stuck in their heads that Jews
went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter. But this is where the real story
begins...Jews did not go as sheep to the slaughter... They fought back.”
- Professor Richard Freund
We’ve all heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but most
people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi
barbarism was. Instead, it’s widely believed “Jews went to their deaths like
sheep to the slaughter.” For decades, the world thought that Jews faced
their fate passively during the Holocaust. This ambitious and groundbreaking
film unveils a different story, shedding light on the heroic stories of Jews
who actively resisted their oppressors. They engaged in over 60 armed uprisings
in ghettos, 25 within concentration and slave labor camps, numbered in the
thousands among partisan units in the forests of Europe, and joined in
non-violent resistance campaigns against the Nazis. Filmed in Poland,
Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back
provides a much-needed corrective to this myth of Jewish passivity. Everywhere
in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the
Nazis. The film illuminates the forgotten, and largely unknown, stories of
Jewish resistance during the Holocaust — and honors the fighters' soulful
bravery and leadership. Through interviews with historians, survivors, and
their families, the film belies a long-held myth and shines a new light on a
lost chapter of history. (USA, 2024, 97 min., color, DCP)
Paula S. Apsell created the feature documentary
Resistance – They Fought Back with the goal of correcting the myth of Jewish
passivity during the Holocaust. Before that, she spent 35 years as the senior
executive producer of the PBS NOVA science series, responsible for more than 650
documentaries in the sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and
medicine, which won every major broadcasting award including the Emmy; the
Peabody; the duPont – Columbia University Gold and Silver Batons; and an
Academy Award nomination for Special Effects. She has been recognized with
numerous individual awards, including the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Emmy of the
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. She’s now the CEO of
Leading Edge Productions, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity.
Dr. Jud Newborn, whom many of you know, spent more
than three years in Germany and Europe doing his doctoral fieldwork for the
University of Chicago on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. During this time he
hunted down former SS Officers and Nazi leaders to interview. He also
worked briefly underground for Poland’s “Solidarity” freedom movement six
months into the Communist Declaration of Martial Law and the sealing of
Poland’s borders, reporting back to Radio Free Europe's headquarters in Munich.
Jud served as Founding Historian of New York’s Holocaust museum, the Museum of
Jewish Heritage, and is the Cinema Arts Centre’s Producer of Celebrity Guest
Programs, for which he has won an Emmy Award. A dynamic multimedia lecture and
storyteller, he has presented his programs coast-to-coast, and from Canada to
Cape Town. He also broke a long-time barrier at the United Nations by giving
the first lecture to his knowledge on the Holocaust ever held there, on Jewish
Anti-Nazi resistance. He has written for The New York Times, The
Jerusalem Post and other leading publications, most recently for Smithsonian
Magazine. Jud is co-author of the now classic “Sophie Scholl and the White
Rose,” which was released in an updated 80th Anniversary edition (1943 -
2023) this past April. The Anne Frank Center honored him in 2018 with
their prestigious Spirit of Anne Frank Human Writes Award.
