As part of the film project, many interviews, video recordings, audio recordings, photographs, and other resources were created and collected, but after editing, many did not appear in the final film. Certain survivor testimonies are presented below as well as a video recording of a survivor group. Our students when questioned, after seeing our film, about what additional materials they would want to see, always responded, more survivors speaking and more Yiddish. They felt that these were the most compelling aspects of the film and conveyed authenticity, even if they could not understand Yiddish.
Toby and Max: Getting Married in the DP Camp
Toby Knobel Fluek and her husband Max Mendl Fluek in conversation at their daughter’s home in Millburn, New Jersey, June 14, 2002.
Survivors in Catskill Mountains: Our Legacy For Our Children
A group of Holocaust survivors in group discussion at their summer bungalow colony, including Toby Fluek, Woodbourne, New York, August 8, 2002.
Boris Chartan: Surviving the War
Boris Chartan, Founder, Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, Nassau County, interviewed in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, May 2, 2012. He was born in Podkamien and knew Toby before the war, coming often to Czernica to visit his grandparents. He describes that he and his parents were hidden by a Polish Catholic family in neighboring Polikrow, that the wife of the couple caring for them was brutally murdered by Ukrainians, and that Boris’s cousin Dzhunia Ben-Sasson was united with them after her family was murdered.
Dzhunia Ben-Sasson: Her Family’s Fate in Czernica
Born in Pokamien, she is a cousin of Boris Chartan. A few years older than Toby, she recalls meeting Toby on two occasions before the war when Toby visited Podkamien. Dzhunia tells that her family was hidden by a Polish Catholic in a bunker in Czernica, and that she was the sole survivor when the bunker was discovered by Ukrainians before the liberation in 1944. Dzhunia Ben-Sasson is interviewed in Jerusalem, Israel, June 20, 2004.