November 2, 2023
7pm – 9pm
The Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project is excited to present Ver Vet Blaybn? (Who Will Remain?) a feature-length documentary film that follows one woman’s journey to understand her grandfather, the Yiddish writer Avrom Sutzkever.
This exclusive Connecticut screening at Edmond Town Hall will feature a live Q and A with the filmmaker, Christa Whitney.
This event is part of the C.H. Booth Library’s Stories of Exile program series, and is made possible through the support of The Friends of the C.H. Booth Library.
This event is free to attend. Please register using the link below.
Film Synopsis:Attempting to better understand her grandfather Avrom Sutzkever, Israeli actress Hadas Kalderon travels to Lithuania, using her grandfather’s diary to trace his early life in Vilna and his survival of the Holocaust. Sutzkever (1913–2010) was an acclaimed Yiddish poet—described by the New York Times as the “greatest poet of the Holocaust”—whose verse drew on his youth in Siberia and Vilna, his spiritual and material resistanceduring World War II, and his post-war life in the State of Israel. Kalderon, whose native language is Hebrew and must rely on translation of her grandfather’s work, is nevertheless determined to connect with what remains of the poet’s bygone world and confront the personal responsibility of preserving her grandfather’s literary legacy.
Woven into the documentary are family home videos, newly recorded interviews, and archival recordings, including Sutzkever’s testimony at the Nuremberg Trial. Recitation of his poetry and personal reflections on resisting Nazi forces as a partisan fighter reveal how Sutzkever tried to make sense of the Holocaust and its aftermath. As Kalderon strives to reconstruct the stories told by her grandfather, the film examines the limits of language, geography, and time.