Filmmaker Gaylen Ross at Shomrei
Filmmaker Gaylen Ross spoke to a crowd of 65 people at Shomrei Emunah on Sunday evening after the screening of her film Killing Kasztner.
Congregation Shomrei Emunah and Montclair State University co-sponsored the free screening as part of the Rescue in Budapest: Raoul Wallenberg commemorative program series which continues until December 18.
I was fascinated by the film. While ostensibly about the trial of Kasztner in Israel (he was accused of collaboration with the Nazis), I was riveted by the scene in which Kasztner’s daughter sits down with the man who assassinated her father.
What did you think? (comment below)
Regrettably, I had to take care of business during the interview between Zsuzsi, the daughter, and Eckstein, her father’s murderer, and so missed most of it. The rest of the film was, however, riveting and troubling on many levels. I was very impressed with the film-maker’s thoughtful and well-informed responses during the Q-and-A after.
Two brief additional comments: first, I think the intelligibility of the film would have been improved if Ekstein’s dialog, spoken in quiet and heavily-accented English, had been provided with sub-titles. Second, someone early on stated that Hannah Senesh, a Hungarian pioneer parachuted back into Hungary toward the end of the war from Palestine and then captured, tortured and executed, was killed by the Gestapo. My understanding has always been that she was caught by Arrow Cross men (Hungarian Nazis), not Germans, and executed by the Hungarian authorities as a “traitor.”
If you missed the film, you are the poorer. As the late Leo Rosten once quipped, Jews are like everybody else…only moreso, and this superb film illustrated that in spades.