San Diego Film Week 2022 The Challenges of Identity
Special | 55m 51sVideo has Closed Captions
Three short films from San Diego explore the challenges and nuances of identity.
Three short films from San Diego explore the challenges and nuances of identity and representation. Hear from a filmmaker with disabilities working to expand inclusion and representation in movies, delve into the challenges of a young artist as she explores the boundaries and evolution of her own self identification, and learn the fascinating story of a Holocaust survivor.
Film Consortium TV is a local public television program presented by KPBS
San Diego Film Week 2022 The Challenges of Identity
Special | 55m 51sVideo has Closed Captions
Three short films from San Diego explore the challenges and nuances of identity and representation. Hear from a filmmaker with disabilities working to expand inclusion and representation in movies, delve into the challenges of a young artist as she explores the boundaries and evolution of her own self identification, and learn the fascinating story of a Holocaust survivor.
How to Watch Film Consortium TV
Film Consortium TV is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
More from This Collection
San Diego Film Week 2022 When Art Meet Sports
Video has Closed Captions
Four short documentaries teach you about local artists and how their work meets sports. (54m 40s)
San Diego Film Week 2022 The San Diego Immigrant Experience
Video has Closed Captions
Three short films from San Diego explore different local immigrant communities. (51m 13s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪♪♪ Steve Froehlich: Are you payin' attention?
The films you're about to watch are part of the San Diego Film Week Documentary Block.
These films are made right here in San Diego and address important topics to all of us in our community.
We'll be watching these films and more on KPBS, or check out our streaming channel, filmcontv.com, so sit back, relax, and enjoy.
♪♪♪ Mike Carnick: I was at that rehab place for about--a long time, months.
And at a gift shop, I saw this little stuffed pig.
You know, it was little, fit in the palm of my hand, and I really liked it.
I started carrying it with me everywhere.
Ever since then, I've been collecting stuffed pigs, so that's where the piggies come from.
♪♪♪ Mike: My mom used to fold up construction paper and staple it together and make little books for me to write in.
I always loved making my own little books, writing and illustrating them myself.
My original major was computer graphic design.
I thought it was kind of boring actually, so I started taking some writing classes.
The assignment was to write the first act of a screenplay, and I wrote the first act, and the teacher liked it, and he said, "You should submit it to the Goldwyn Film Festival."
Long story short, it ended up winning the grand prize.
That was "Who's Driving Doug," a feature film that ended up being produced.
It's about a handsome young man, like myself, in a wheelchair, who hires a driver to take him to college.
The driver ends up, last minute, needing to go to Vegas, but he doesn't have a car, so he needs to borrow Doug's car--drove to Vegas together.
The good thing about writing is you can do it anywhere.
You can write from a hospital bed, which I have done.
My passion is talking about disability and telling stories about people that are disabled.
I do feel a deep, deep empathy and compassion for people that have grown up with similar circumstances such as myself.
I think that those stories need to be told.
I tend not to focus too much on the medical aspect of being disabled 'cause I find it turns into what I call "disability porn," people looking at the spectacle of the medical brutality of it and then going, "Oh, how terrible."
I try to focus on the social aspects of having a chronic illness, the sort of inherent loneliness that corresponds with knowing that you're different.
"Rolling Romance" is a short film about two young people with muscular dystrophy.
They go on a blind date through a dating website, a dating website specifically tailored for people with disabilities.
Orson: Hey, man.
Brad: All right, so let's see this girl you've been talkin' about.
Orson: All right.
Well, I gotta log in first.
Brad: Holy [bleep] you can actually search by type of disability?
Orson: Hmm.
Brad: That is kinky.
Amputee, double amputee, multiple sclerosis.
Okay.
There's "social anxiety"?
Come on, give me a [bleep] break.
♪♪♪ Orson: Hi.
Janice: Hey there.
Orson: I got this for you.
Janice: It's a lizard.
Orson: I think it's a frog.
Janice: Oh.
Mike: And there's some drug and rock 'n' roll involved, and things start to get a little out of hand.
Orson: I need your help.
I took drugs.
Pot brownies.
How long does it last?
Brad: Forever, man.
Forever.
Orson: No, I'm serious, man.
I am freaking out here.
Brad: Oh, [bleep] female: Is everything okay in there?
Orson: I'm pooping.
Brad: No, don't--don't do that.
Orson: I think I just stopped breathing.
Mike: At the end of 2014, I underwent jaw surgery.
I was in the ICU for a little over 40 days.
I couldn't read or eat or speak.
I was completely mentally aware, which made it really agonizing.
But I'm not really in the hospital all that much even though I might look like I'm in the hospital all the time.
Fortunately, so far, I've been able to stay relatively healthy, as far as my standards go.
And my parents are awesome.
They support me.
My family's awesome.
I have some pretty amazing friends.
The biggest obstacles for me are mobility, accessibility, my speech.
Well, it's hard for people to understand my speech sometimes.
And, really, the social aspect, again, is the hardest for me.
It means no--there's no pill you can take for social issues.
I mean, everyone feels different, but when you're so obviously physically different, it carries this whole different weight, and it really builds up this sense of isolation and loneliness.
That's what I try to talk about.
My latest pilot is called "Manny Fantasma."
It's about a psychologist who treats paranormal beings like ghosts, vampires, werewolves.
It deals with mental illness.
It's really not that far off of my core themes.
Discrimination is kind of a--kind of a loaded word.
Most people are polite, and they want to help.
I think the issue comes when people are not used to interacting with people with disabilities.
We have very little representation in TV and film, and I think that that's--that is a kind of discrimination, but when people don't have a frame of reference on how to interact with someone that's different from them, a lot of people will choose to be non-confrontational, rather than risk offending someone, so they will choose to avoid the person.
Stephanie: I'll get the number 3, please.
Julian: I'll have the "Big Texas" Burger.
Ethel: And what can I get for him?
Julian: I don't know, Ethel.
Why don't you ask him?
Mike: If we had more people in front and behind the camera that have chronic illnesses, I think that people would not be so knocked on their back when they meet someone like me or someone who is--who looks different on the outside.
It's not unique to people with disabilities.
It's really about the same thing for a lot of different minorities.
I wanna make a lot of money and die of a drug overdose.
Well, no, but-- Orson: Wow.
Angelica: They're my babies.
Orson: I like the pink ones.
Janice: I know, right?
Totally hot.
I am a shoe whore.
Orson: That's kind of ironic, considering you can't walk.
Janice: Pretty good.
Orson: I'm sorry.
I have a weird sense of humor.
Mike: I think, pragmatically, I'd like to be successful enough to keep making films.
I try to live day by day.
Hopefully, I'll be--I'll have won the Oscar in five years, MTV Awards Best Dressed or maybe I'll be dead or maybe-- maybe I'll be in Paris, working on my memoirs.
I don't like to put too much stock into thinking about the future because that goes back to prognosis, doctors telling me that I wouldn't live to a certain age or whatever, and, I guess, I don't have time for that.
I just want to be able to keep telling my stories.
Orson: I feel so [bleep] good right now.
Janice: Nice, isn't it?
Orson: Oh, my god, yes.
♪♪♪ Orson: Your hand is so soft and fuzzy.
Janice: Yours is warm.
Orson: Do you want me to stop?
Janice: No.
It's nice.
Orson: You know, if this were a romantic comedy, we'd be totally [bleep] right now.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, just kidding.
♪♪♪ male: Can you introduce yourself?
Parker Goodwin: Hello, my name is Parker Goodwin, and I am a 16-year-old artist.
male: That's not your birth name.
Is that correct?
Parker: That is correct.
male: What is your birth name?
Parker: My birth name is Chamberlynn Goodwin.
male: So why did you change your name?
Parker: I've changed my name actually a lot of times because I just never felt connected to that name and also because I needed a way to escape and try to find myself, but, I guess, in a sense, it is, like, each name that I have chosen throughout my short life is definitely, like, a piece of me, and it's nice to look back on.
male: And are you going to change your name again?
Parker: Probably not.
I feel like this is who I am now.
I feel like I have, kind of, come full circle, and this is kind of, like, the last stage, but I have said that before in the past, and I've changed my name before, but this one feels like the most I've ever felt like me.
♪♪♪ male: What are you working on right now, Parker?
Parker: Right now, I'm working on my friend's surfboard because she wanted me to draw on her surfboard before she goes to Costa Rica 'cause she's a competitive surfer, and I'm honored to do it for her.
Parker: I don't remember there ever being a time in my life that I wasn't doing art or thinking about art or not being able to do something artistic whether it be physical, like, hand visual arts or moving my body.
Like, I love art.
male: What conditions do you have?
Parker: I have an anxiety disorder, and I have a depressive disorder, but I am going to therapy twice a week to get help with that.
male: So what did it feel like when you learned that you--anxiety and were depressed?
Parker: I felt very, like, much like an outsider, but it never--I never wanted to define myself with those characteristics.
I just kind of accepted it and tried to be as normal with everyone else as I could, but that didn't really help me in the end, and throughout the years, it felt like I was getting more and more isolated from my peer group.
female: Darker than usual.
female: That one's like you.
female: You should dye it blue.
female: Yeah, I dyed it blue.
Parker: I feel like it is a brilliant way to really express, like, the deep parts of me that sometimes I can't talk about with other people or the people closest to me.
Parker: It's done, yay.
Parker: Sometimes I feel like my art is better at expressing me more than I can express myself verbally.
Parker: I'm really happy with this.
male: You're really happy with it?
Parker: Yeah, I only did it--I only did it for three days, but it's probably my favorite piece of this year so far so-- Parker: So I guess the turning point to realizing that there was nothing wrong with me was after probably one--the most traumatic thing that I've had to go through, so, in early 2017, I got into, like, you know, like, "the bad kids' squad," and there was one specific person, and we started dating.
I thought I felt happy with this relationship, but internally, I just didn't wanna be lonely anymore because I had felt like I've been alone for my entire life, so it was nice having this one person, like, say beautiful things to me and say that I was beautiful and all that stuff, but, unfortunately, it got really heavy, really fast, and this person heavily started to emotionally manipulate me and started calling me terrible things, and he was actually one of the people that started saying that there was something wrong with me.
male: What were some of the specific things that your boyfriend said to you at that time?
Parker: He would tell me that I was fat and lazy and disgusting.
He would call me a "pig" and a "whale" and, just, very hurtful things.
I started believing all those things that he would say, and it was really hard to deal with, and it was almost constantly every day.
If I didn't do the things that he wanted me to do for him or disagreed with him on anything, it got to a point where he was also threatening me with his own life and saying that he was gonna kill himself if I didn't do any of these things, and it just got to a point that, at first, I didn't believe that he was going to, but then he started self-harming, and he would send me photos of the pictures, and he would blame it on me, and that's when I really realized that it wasn't just a joke anymore, and it wasn't--it was a serious thing, you know, and it got really out of hand really fast, and I didn't know how to control it, and I remember, just, being scared and fearful a lot and constantly dreading, like, waking up the next day and finding out that he killed himself because of me.
He kind of, unfortunately, like, just, left.
It was very sudden, and I just remember feeling completely shattered, like everything in my life just went downhill and shattered like a vase crashing onto a floor.
Like, it was just terrible, and just being reminded of all those negative things and not being able to think of anything positive 'cause I wasn't eating, and I wasn't sleeping, and I couldn't think straight, and I didn't talk to anyone.
I didn't tell even my own mom about this whole situation until, actually, two months ago, and it was just holding onto it for so long, and it was festering.
I just remember laying in my bed, looking up at my ceiling and being like, "I cannot be Crow anymore.
Like, that person was taken away from me, and she's dead, and I just remember being, like, Parker, and just thinking about that and being like, "That's who I need to be," and that was really like the significant turning point for almost everything in my life was, just, this is who I am now.
Like, this person doesn't belong to me anymore, and I am not--those words do not define me.
There is nothing wrong with me.
I am me, and I am not perfect," and, slowly, I picked up the pieces of the vase, but this time, I wasn't trying to go back to my Crow identity.
I was forming who I am now, which is Parker.
♪ I just want to cry, but I can't anymore.
♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] [vocalizing] Adolf Hitler: [speaking foreign language] all: [cheering] ♪♪♪ Dr. Jacob Eisenbach: My name is Dr. Jacob Eisenbach.
I was, for five years, incarcerated by the Nazis.
I was born in the city of Lodz, in Poland.
The city had 700,000 in population, and half of them were Jewish.
I like to tell the story about my experiences under the Nazi regime because it is very important for my children, my grandchildren, and all future generations that this story will never be forgotten.
I was very fortunate to have a great, good childhood.
I have a family of two younger brothers, an older sister, and my parents.
Very loving family.
My mother died one year before the war.
I was 15 at the time.
She would gather her four children, put her arms around us, and bless us by saying, "You are my greatest possession."
She never realized how important that lesson was to us under the Nazi occupation because it made us feel that we are loved and that our lives are important, and no matter what Hitler said about us and no matter what he did to us, he could not possibly destroy those feelings.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, which was a great surprise.
He came to power in 1933, and shortly after he came to power, he started arming the German Army.
He had the Air Force, he had tanks, he had heavy armaments, ammunition, trucks, motorcycles.
He had everything he needed to attack Poland.
Poland was completely unprepared.
They didn't have an Air Force or armaments or ammunition or trucks--absolutely nothing.
The polish arm was moving around in horses.
It was no match to the powerful German Army.
My city was occupied by the Nazis within seven days of the outbreak of the war, September 1, 1939.
Shortly after occupied my city, they started building a barbed wire fence around the old part of the city.
Every 200 feet, around that fence was a watch tower which was occupied by Nazis with machine guns and search lights.
They issued an order that every Jew has to be inside the ghetto before May 1, and any Jew found outside the ghetto after that date would be shot to death on the spot.
Before that date, it was still possible to escape from the Nazi part of Poland to the Russian part of Poland.
One week before the war broke out, Hitler signed the Nonaggression Pact with Stalin, the president of the Soviet Union.
They agreed to divide Poland and not interfere with each other's activities.
So many Jews from Lodz escaped to the Russian part of Poland.
The Russians did not kill Jews.
Among those people who escaped was my sister, Fela.
She was 18 at the time.
She just finished high school.
She and a few of her girlfriends escaped to the city of Lwow, occupied by the Russians, and we could communicate with her, but after May 1, 1940, the ghetto was sealed off from the rest of the world.
We lost all communication with anybody, so there was no mail, no radio, no newspapers--nothing.
We were completely cut off.
We didn't know what was going on outside the ghetto.
After the war, I met a lady who was from the city of Lwow, where my sister moved into, and she told me what happened in Lwow.
Two years after the outbreak of the war, Hitler decided to break the Nonaggression Pact with Stalin and invade the Soviet Union because there were about three million Jews in the Soviet Union, and he had plans for them.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Dr. Eisenbach: After they locked up the ghetto, maybe within a year or so, they started shipping people out to the--so it turned out the people were being shipped to other camps for work, but that was a big lie.
We found out from Polish train conductors that they've taken those people by trainloads, seven, eight people per load, and took them to these camps, and no one ever came out of there, and they could smell burning flesh in the air, so we knew what the Nazis were doing with those people they started shipping out of the ghetto.
Once they locked up the ghetto, on May 1, 1940, they were in full control of the food supplies, and they gave us just enough food so we don't die from starvation, but many people were dying from starvation.
We also had a typhus epidemic, a deadly disease.
One day, my younger brother, Henry--he was 11 years old--developed a very high fever.
We called the doctor.
He diagnosed him with typhus, and he told us to take him to the hospital.
So we took Henry to the hospital, and the next morning, I was on my way to work, walking.
I have a little job there, and I was passing one of the two hospitals, and what do I see?
There was a big truck, the kind of truck that was used to transport cattle, with spaces between the boards, guarded by Nazis with machine guns, and so they're loading patients from that hospital on that truck.
Thirteen layers of live people were loaded on top of each other.
When I saw that, I started running to the other hospital that I took my brother to the day before.
It was three miles, and the streets were deserted.
On the way, I came across another truck like this, moving away from that other hospital where my brother was, and I stopped for a moment to look between the boards to see if I can see my brother.
I didn't see him, but truck was loaded with live people to the top.
The driver had a companion in the driving compartment.
He saw me look at the--looking at the truck.
He pulled out his machine gun and started shooting at me, but he didn't reach me because I was in front of an apartment building, and I run into the building, and his bullets didn't reach me, so the truck continued away from the hospital, and I continued running toward the hospital.
When I got there, I saw a third truck standing there in front of the hospital, being loaded with patients.
The Nazis guarded it with machine guns.
Couldn't get in.
The hospital grounds were surrounded by a 8-foot fence, so I went to the back of the fence, and I saw a big crowd of people standing outside that fence, and nurses were handing patients over to that crowd to save them from the Nazis.
I climbed that 8-foot fence.
To this day, I can't figure out how I did.
I climbed the fence, went up to the room where I put my brother in the day before, and he was not there.
So I asked the nurses, "Where is Henry?"
"Oh, Henry was taken 15 minutes away--15 minutes ago," and he was in that truck that I passed in the streets.
So I have never seen Henry again.
That left my father, my brother Sam, and me in the ghetto because the rest of my family of-- was already shipped out of the ghetto.
One day, my father receives an order to report for deportation with 600 other men, and we didn't know they were doing with these 600 men, but I met a man, after the war, who escaped from that group, and he told me what the Nazis did with them.
They had them carry heavy rocks from place to place, useless work on a starvation diet, and they all died out.
I have never seen my father again.
That left me and my brother, Sam.
One day, I received an order to report for deportation.
That was a death sentence.
My brother Sam did not get the order to report.
He didn't have to go.
I did not report.
I went into hiding, and my brother was with me.
I was hiding in friends' places.
Before I went into hiding, Sam and I lived in a one-room place upstairs with squeaking wooden steps leading to it, 20 below zero outside and 20 below zero inside, so there was no fuel.
After a month of hiding, we ran out of places to hide.
After we left that room where we lived, we took everything out of it before we left and put a padlock on it, and neighbors were telling us that the Nazis were there, but the police was there, many times, looking for me, and once they saw the padlock, they walked away.
So, when we ran out of places to hide, we decided to go back to that room.
The other friend put the padlock on the outside.
He brought us a little food rations and water.
The room was completely empty, and we put a pile of straw in the corner.
We were hiding in that pile of straw.
And we were in that room for a while, and one night, at midnight, we hear heavy footsteps on those squeaking wooden floors and loud voices.
Two policemen are coming up.
One of them had a flashlight.
He looks at the padlock, and he says--flashlight-- he says, "There's a padlock here.
There's nobody in here.
Let's go."
And the other policeman was a wiseguy, and he says, "No, let's not go.
Let's knock off the padlock."
They went downstairs, found a crowbar, came back, knocked off the padlock, opened the door, and the first policeman with the flashlight looks around the room, and he says to him, "Well, the room is empty.
There's nobody here.
Let's go."
And the other guy says, "No, let's not go.
Let's look at the pile of straw."
And he finds us.
And I know that I'm going to die.
I know I'm going to Auschwitz.
Sam didn't have to go.
He wasn't ordered to report.
He could have said to me, "Jake, I know where you're going.
You are going to the gas chambers.
I'm not going with you."
But this is not what Sam said, but he did say is "Jake, our whole family's now gone.
Now they're taking you away.
I'm not staying here by myself.
I'm going with you.
Wherever you go, I go, and whatever will happen to you will happen to me."
And he said that, knowing full well that he's going to the gas chambers with me.
That's the kind of a bond we have in our family.
They loaded us in trains, cattle trains, three days and three nights.
After three days, they unlock the cars of the train--each car was guarded by Nazis with machine guns--and told us to get out, and we were sure we're in Auschwitz.
We didn't know, but expected that this was Auschwitz, but before long, we found out that this was not Auschwitz.
We were in Auschwitz.
Said they'll take us to Auschwitz.
We were at the doorstep of the gas chambers, but they never unloaded us in Auschwitz.
They took us to a munition factory in the city of Skarzysko, about 70 miles away from the city of -- So it was a munition factory which was, before the war, operated by the Polish government.
Nazis took over it, and they had an adjoining concentration camp with 6,000 Jews who were working in that factory, and this is where we arrived.
We were there for a few months.
That was in already April of 1944, and we were there till about July.
The Eastern Front was getting closer and closer.
♪♪♪ Dr. Eisenbach: The Nazis lost so many soldiers on the Eastern Front, and they took their own German people out of war, out of the war production to send them to the front to replace the dead soldiers, and they decided, in the last minute, "Those young Jews who are still able to work, instead of gassing them, we'll put them to work in our war production," and Sam and I were working in that munition factory.
In July of 1944, after we have been about three months in that concentration camp in Skarzysko, the Eastern Front was moving closer and closer, and the Nazis decided to move the factory closer to Germany, to the city of Czestochowa, and we had to move those heavy machines, which weighed about two, three tons, on wooden rollers.
One of my friends, Benjamin, a good personal friend, fell on that--a machine and broke a leg, and he was screaming in excruciating pain, and a Nazi soldier came along and put a bullet in his head.
He wasn't about to help a sick Jew.
My blood was boiling, but Benjamin was dead.
When we arrived in Czestochowa, we did the same thing that we did in Skarzysko.
The name of that munition factory was HASAG.
On January 15, 1945, you could hear--you could hear bullets flying, shrapnels, armaments, on the outside in the city of Czestochowa, and all of a sudden, the Nazi soldiers guarding the camp with machine guns disappeared from the towers.
They got ordered to run for their lives because the Russians are after them, and the Jewish commander of the camp told us not to leave the camp during the night.
It's too dangerous.
All these bullets and shrapnels are flying all over the place, so we followed that advice.
The next morning, we walk out of the camp, Sam and I. I met my future wife in a very romantic place in this Nazi concentration camp in Skarzysko, so the three of us--her name was Irene--the three of us walked out of the camp on January 16, 1945.
We were free.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Dr. Eisenbach: If I retired from dentistry, I'm not retired.
I have a new profession.
I speak all over the country and internationally on the topics of hate, discrimination, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the problem of global importance which is genocide.
Genocide has been taking place for thousands of years against all kinds of people, all kinds of races, religions and nationalities and cultures, not only against Jews.
And I'm involved in considerable time, my speeches, about how to counteract and how to prevent genocides.
The plan is that the people who are likely to commit a genocide are very visible in society.
One way to prevent them to commit genocides is to use very influential politician to put political pressure on them, so they can put economic pressure on them, so they can put military pressure on them, so they could have a powerful army without to lose a single life in the process.
Of just the presence of a powerful army will prevent them from committing genocides.
There are many organizations, international organizations that have been established for the purpose of preventing and eliminating genocides, and this plan would have to be under the leadership of the United States, and some day, the day will come where the people of the world will be able to say with confidence, "Never again."
I give a lot of speeches on the topic of the Holocaust and other topics, and after my speeches, I have question and answer periods.
One of the questions I'm asked--I was asked is, did I lose faith in humanity.
I tell my audiences the story of the King of Denmark.
Most people have never heard of it.
When the Nazis occupied Denmark, they ordered the Jewish people to put on yellow stars on their outer clothing so they could identify them in the streets, round them up, and send them to the gas chambers, and the King of Denmark said to Hitler, "If this is what you are going to do to our Jewish citizens, I'm going to put on a yellow star.
My entire family will put on yellow stars.
Every Dane in the country will put on yellow stars, and you will not be able to tell who's Jewish and who's not."
Then he was concerned that the Nazis may come up with other ways to identify the Jews, so he put them on fishing boats and sent all of them to neutral Sweden.
And all Danish Jews survived the war in Sweden.
Hitler could not touch them from Sweden.
He did not occupy Sweden.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat.
He was the ambassador of Japan with Lithuania.
He couldn't stand watching what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, so he asked his government for permission to issue 6,000 visas to the Jews so they could go to Japan and other Far Eastern countries where Hitler couldn't reach them.
The Japanese were allied with the Nazis at that time, and they turned down his request.
What did Mr. Sugihara do?
He disobeyed the order of his government and issued those 6,000 visas against the orders of his government, knowing full well what they'll do to him, which they did.
They fired him from his position and took him and his family back to Japan, and he lived in poverty and obscurity.
Now Mr. Sugihara is a great humanitarian hero in Japan, and the Japanese people in Little Tokyo, in Los Angeles, also built a statue in his honor.
And in Japan, there's a big statue in-- Mr. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat.
He was the ambassador to Hungary.
He came from a aristocratic Swedish family.
And when Hitler occupied Hungary, he was just about to ship 100,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, and Mr. Wallenberg issued 100,000 Swedish visas.
They instantly became Swedish citizens, and Hitler could not touch them.
♪♪♪ Dr. Eisenbach: Another reason why I do not feel like having revenge is because I'm happy to live in that great country of the United States.
I'm in fairly good health.
This is my home, and now I'm an American patriot, and the white and blue flag with the star of David on it, which is the flag of the state of Israel, is flying proudly.
It's a great state.
This is my revenge.
As far as her merits, United States--anti-Semitism in the United States, it's there.
We have skinheads, we have anti-Semites, we have racists, but I have lived here for 70 years since 1950.
I have never experienced anti-Semitism.
Those people, the racists and anti-Semites, they are failures in society.
They are failures in employment.
They are failures in education.
They are failures in business.
The only things they are good at is hatred, and I do not think that they have much following.
Their following is very small.
So, after living happily in the United States, I'm not afraid of them--that we are stronger and louder and that they'll never catch up with us.
We are concerned about some anti-Semitic outbreaks, and we have to do whatever we can to protect Jewish institutions and synagogues from attacks, but it's a big problem, but it's not a problem that is supported by the majority of the American people, so it's a very small percentage of anti-Semites in the United States.
Mark Twain, a great American writer, once said, "What--the Jewish people have persecutors and killers for thousands of years, but they're still around.
What is the secret of the Jewish people?"
There is no secret.
The main reason we are still alive and we're going to continue to be around is because our indestructible faith in God.
And, someday, we'll reach the state of "Never again."
Thank you.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male: We should not allow the enemy to enjoy one more victory, by allowing his crimes against humanity to be erased from human memory.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: This program was made possible by funding from Panasonic Lumix, Nelson Photo & Video, Heartland Films, KPBS, and viewers like you.
Thank you.
♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪
Film Consortium TV is a local public television program presented by KPBS