NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE
Washington Jewish Film Festival at Italian Embassy, December 2010
In the summer of 1943, thousands of Jewish refugees in Italian-occupied southern France enjoyed a rare respite from persecution, protected by an unusual force: the occupying Italian Army, who temporarily shielded local and foreign Jews despite pressure from the Germans and the French Vichy administration. In one Alpine village, Saint Martin Vesubie, life was, briefly, renewed as Jews attended synagogues, schools and cafes, and Yiddish was heard as often as French. With the invasion of Nazi troops in September the lull was broken and most of the Jews were deported. Veteran French filmmaker Andre Waksman, whose family survived the Holocaust in southern France, reconstructs this little known World War II history.
"We can and must always stand to save lives. If the film has to be a historical overview of a painful period of our history and origins, must above all get the message of resistance against tyranny and humanity of life for humans'
-Filmmakers André Waksman and Elena Bede
Tula Beiner, Harry Burger, Enzo Cavaglion, Famille Fougère, Charles Roman, Vincent Gasiglia, Soeurs Giordana, Carmen Giraudi , Jean Grenda, Paulette Grimberg, Sigi Hart, Mario Levin, Raimondo Luraghi, Louis Martin, Ruth Mayer, Walter Marx, Léopold Neuman, Margot Raibaut, Henri Paperman, Bella Pisarz, Lia Quitt, Armando Rosato, Francis Rosato, Jacques Sharfmann, Ruth Sokolowsky, Gérard Solémis, Frederico Strobino, Don Viale, Gitta Sarah, Fajerstein Walchirk, Don Brondello, Cécile et J-C Dreymann
Marie-Anne Matard Bonucci, Susan Zuccotti, Alberto Cavaglion, Kathy Hazan, Serge Klarsfeld, Jean-Louis Paniccaci, Robert O. Paxton, Davide Rodogno
Home Use DVD:
$29.95Does not include Classroom or Library Use Rights or Public Performance Rights. More Information
Classroom/Library Use DVD: $195
Does not include Public Performance Rights. More Information
Photographs,
From Top to Bottom:
(1) Memorial at Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy
(2) One of the few photographs that exist of the actual march across the Alps,
photographed by Charles Roman, who appears in the film.
(3) Painting representing the flight across the mountains from Saint Martin
Vesubie and the capture of 350 Jews and their imprisonment at Borgo San Dalmazzo
before being deported to Auschwitz via Nice and Drancy in France. The artist,
Franco Biagioni, is from Cuneo, the main town of the region of Piedmont where
the refugees arrived.
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