Ver Vet Blaybn? / Who Will Remain? (film)

Oshman Family JCC (Palo Alto), in partnership with the Yiddish Book Center, invites you to this Yom HaShoah event, in remembrance of the six million Jewish people who died in the Holocaust.

Program:
12:30pm | Doors open
1:00–2:00pm | Film screening: Ver Vet Blaybn? / Who Will Remain? (English, Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian, with subtitles)
2:00–2:30pm | Audience Q&A with film director Christa P. Whitney
2:30–3:30pm | Snacks, drinks, shmoozing in the Cultural Arts lobby and info display of Wexler Oral History Project

Attempting to better understand her grandfather Avrom (Abraham) 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 resistance during World War II, and his post-war life in the State of Israel.

Kalderon, whose native language is Hebrew and must rely on translations 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.

Tickets: $10 in advance through Eventbrite or call the JCC’s Customer Service Desk at (650) 223-8700 | At the door: $20