It should be noted that one of the more helpful aspects of a publicly funded writing project is that those who contribute feel a responsibility for the success of the project. One of my motivations for using Kickstarter – aside from, ya know, getting people to pay for me to write – was that it creates a sense of community around a project and a sense of accountability to that public to write the screenplay and write it well. So it is both unsurprising and welcomed when people send us emails with thoughts, ideas and information relevant to the project.
A family member of Mike’s passed along this 2000 Cincinnati Enquirer piece on a man from Turijsk, Ukraine – the same town as Joseph that we hope to visit. Samuel Boymel encountered a situation similar to Joseph Kershner, albeit 20 years later, when he witnessed the death of 12,500 Jews, including his family, at the hands of German soldiers and Ukrainian militia and police
“Loif, mine kindt, loif,” he said, repeating the words his mother shouted to him when he was 12. Translated, it means “Run, my son, run away.”
It was Aug. 23, 1942, when 6,000 Jews were being marched by Ukrainian police and militia and German soldiers to the Walner brick factory, near the town of Kovel in Ukraine.
“As we were turned uphill to a dirt path, panic broke. There were screams because all of us believed we were being marched to our ultimate destiny,” Mr. Boymel said.
He ran into Rostov Forest in the town of Rostov, about nine miles away. That was the last time he saw his family.
On that day, 6,000 Jews from Turijsk and 6,500 from the nearby village of Shtetis were executed. He spent much of his life from 1942 to 1945 on the run, sleeping in pig pens and cattle barns. He said he was given food by a Ukrainian farmer and his daughter, and that a Ukrainian soldier helped him escape.
While Boymel’s horrifying experience was not directly related to Joseph’s, it does exemplify the type of acts commited against Jews in Eastern Europe that can rattle ones faith in humanity and beyond … though it should be noted that the same spirit that led Joseph to risk his life and the many individuals who helped Boymel escape does its part to restore that shaken faith.
It is, indeed, incidents like Boymel’s and Joseph’s that led to this Economist designed redrawn map of Europe. (via Kottke)
In Britain’s place should come Poland, which has suffered quite enough in its location between Russia and Germany and deserves a chance to enjoy the bracing winds of the North Atlantic and the security of sea water between it and any potential invaders.
It’s the sort of sublime reality that, perhaps, you can only laugh at the accuracy of. But this history emphasizes the indomitable of someone like Joseph Kershner, who clearly must have recognized the historical odds he faced in returning to a land and legacy he had done his best to cast off, and why his story is all the more compelling.
