toby fluek film
A Film on the Life and Art of Holocaust Survivor Toby Knobel Fluek |
Crew films Toby Fluek at work in the Catskill Mountains while husband, Max Fluek, looks on.
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There is no educational tool that rivals a film for long term use in the classroom and in other settings. Drexel University's Judaic Studies Program has undertaken to produce a film on the life and art of Holocaust survivor Toby Knobel Fluek, author of Memories of My Life in a Polish Village 1930-1949 and Passover as I Remember It (Knopf, 1990; 1994). This project corresponds closely to one of the main areas of emphasis of our Program, helping to insure the representation and survival of the Yiddish cultural life of Eastern Europe through education. The film will integrate the contemporary life of Toby Fluek and her family with the personal history of her career as an artist. By featuring art work and verbal description the film uncovers the traditional pre-war household, the occupation of the Soviets, the fate of Toby and her family under the Nazis, her miraculous survival, and her life in the Displaced Persons camp and in the United States.
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Dr. Peltz and Toby Fluek at her Drexel presentation.
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Videographer Brook Smiler '02 puts microphone on Toby Fluek while filming assistant Amy Ballard '02 looks on.
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Ms. Fluek leaves us a legacy of lessons through her art. Her interpretation of the world in which she grew up, in the village of Czernica, in Southeastern Poland, where ten Jewish families followed the traditions of Jews for centuries, living amongst two hundred fifty non-Jewish families, can serve as an unparalleled lesson of cultural creativity and continuity. The drawings, paintings, and narratives provide a combined message that no other survivor has been able to construct. This remarkable woman has been determined over the past forty years to make a uniquely strong statement of what the intense Jewish experience comprised before, during, and after the War. By filming Toby Fluek creating a painting, answering her grandson's questions, or meeting with young students, a contemporary connection will be introduced to the striking life story of a young Jewish girl in Poland. Constantly moving back and forth from the current day to daily Jewish life of sixty-five years ago, the viewer will be drawn into the elaborately differentiated life of Polish Jews that had evolved over centuries.
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Thanks to an initial grant from the Robert Saligman Foundation, in November 2001, Ms. Fluek was able to come to Philadelphia to present her artwork and life story to a Drexel University community audience, in conjunction with a Judaic Studies course offered on the History of the Holocaust. At the time of that visit, during discussions with Ms. Fluek and her family, it became clear that an educational film should be produced as soon as possible in order to capture and preserve her vibrant vision. The project was planned in consultation with experts in various fields, and a staff of professionals was established to make this idea a reality. The staff includes:
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L to R: David Finkler, grandson, Toby Fluek, Lillian Finkler, daughter.
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Project Director, Producer, and Co-author: Rakhmiel Peltz, Ph.D., Director of Judaic Studies and Professor of Sociolinguistics, Drexel University, an authority on the social history of Yiddish language and culture.
Artistic Director and Co-Author: Amiram Amitai, director and producer of more than thirty films, Adjunct Professor of Judaic Studies, Drexel University.
Co-Author: Adina Cimet, Ph.D., Sociologist; Member, Judaic Studies Advisory Board, Drexel University; Project Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, in charge of developing curricular materials for high school students on pre-World War II Jewish life in Poland.
Filmographers: Brooke Smiler, Drexel University '02, Film and Video major, Judaic Studies student; Daniel Watchulonis.
Editors: Amiram Amitai, and Andrew Altrichter, Media Technician, DUTV, Drexel University.
Administrative Coordinator: Kathy Carll, Administrative Coordinator of Drexel's Judaic Studies Program.
Interviewer and Narrator: Hannah Kliger, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Communication and Jewish Studies, Penn State University Abington, interviewer and narrator, in Yiddish and English.
Musical Director: Alexander Botwinik, music educator, choir director, pianist, authority on the Yiddish musical repertoire.
The project is in the final stages of editing. During the summer of 2007, Dr. Peltz visited Poland and Israel in order to help plan the context for launching the film in various educational settings.
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A painting by Toby Fluek
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