Renaissance Center to host screening of documentary on Living On art exhibit
Release Date: 2/15/2007. Expired: 3/3/2007
The Renaissance Center will host a free screening of the award-winning documentary Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust on Saturday, March 3. Following the screening will be a question-and-answer session featuring filmmaker Will Pedigo, photographer Robert Heller and two Nashvillians who fled Nazi Germany during World War II.
The free screening of the 70-minute documentary begins at 5 p.m. in the Performance Hall of The Renaissance Center in Dickson.
Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust is a documentary about the making of the Living On: Portraits of Tennessee Survivors and Liberators art exhibit on display in the galleries of The Renaissance Center through April 29. Commissioned by the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, the traveling exhibit features 71 photographic portraits and biographical sketches of Holocaust survivors, refugees, hidden children and liberators who all now live in Tennessee.
The photographs were taken by Heller, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Heller and journalist Dawn Weiss Smith traveled across the state to create the exhibit, finding survivors, refugees and liberators through newspaper advertisements, Jewish community centers and by word of mouth. Since the exhibit was created in 2004, more survivors and liberators have come forward and the exhibit has grown to 71 portraits. It is displayed in its entirety for the first time at The Renaissance Center.
After Smith interviewed each subject about his or her life before, during and after World War II, Heller, who teaches photojournalism and graphic design, photographed each person. While listening to the interviews was “emotionally demanding and exhausting,” Heller said the words and expressions fused into an image of the kind of portrait he wanted for each individual.
Pedigo, a 2002 UT graduate and editor at WNPT in Nashville, accompanied Heller and Smith and produced more than 50 hours of videotape documenting Smith’s interviews and Heller’s photography sessions.
Pedigo produced a documentary that allows viewers to hear first-hand the stories of Holocaust survivors and liberators. Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust received three Midsouth Regional Emmy nominations and won Best Documentary/Topical.
After starting as an intern at Nashville Public Television, Pedigo was hired as a production assistant in 2003 and is now an editor. He also assisted in shooting and editing WNPT’s award-winning The Carter Family: An American Original and produces segments for Tennessee Crossroads.
Heller and Pedigo will take part in the question-and-answer session following the screening of Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust.
Joining them will be Eva and Eric Rosenfeld of Nashville.
Born in what was then Konigsberg, Germany, Eva Lepehne Rosenfeld and her parents fled to Italy in 1936 to escape the growing Nazi persecution of Jews. Her mother died and when Italy allied with Germany, her father lost his business and was jailed. Following his release, he escaped to France on a fishing boat hoping to find a place to bring his family. He eventually would be captured and die on his way to Auschwitz.
An orphan at the age of 13, Eva hid out with friends until she was 17, living in constant terror of being discovered by the German soldiers. She was one of 982 refugees that the US government accepted as the war spread throughout Europe. Eva would go on to learn English, finish high school and graduate from nursing school.
Eric Rosenfeld fled from Germany to the United States, only to return to his hometown as a member of the US Army near the end of the war. Born in Seeheim, Germany, Eric was part of the Children’s Transports by the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, which allowed him to flee to New York in 1941 to live with relatives. In 1944 he joined the US Army and because he was fluent in German, he was assigned to a counterintelligence corps.
He advanced with the 103rd Infantry into Germany in 1945 and just weeks before the Nazi surrender he was part of the occupying force in Seeheim, his hometown. Eric confronted the town’s mayor about the fate of his family, learning that his mother and uncle had been relocated to Darmstadt, Germany, where more than 3,000 Jews were interned or killed. Rosenfeld’s mother was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died.
Eva and Eric met following the war in Rochester, N.Y. The couple now resides in Nashville and both are featured in the Living On exhibit.
The screening of Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust and the accompanying question-and-answer session are free and open to the public.
Copies of the documentary are on sale in The Virtually Unlimited Bookstore inside The Renaissance Center.
In addition to hosting the Living On exhibit, The Renaissance Center’s Mind Enriching Theatre series is presenting the award-winning play Auschwitz Lullaby for school field trips through April 13. Written by James C. Wall, the play is a powerful story based on actual events taken from the diaries of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Auschwitz Lullaby is recommended for grades 7 and up.
For more information on the Living On exhibit and the screening of the Living On documentary, contact Armon Means, gallery curator, at (615) 740-5545 or armon.means@rcenter.org, or visit www.rcenter.org.
To schedule a field trip to see the exhibit or a performance of Auschwitz Lullaby, contact Laura Jackson at (615) 740-5533 or laura.jackson@rcenter.org.
The Renaissance Center is a fine arts education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.
Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.
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