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West Bloomfield (248) 538-6000 HERCULES FAMILY RESTAURANT 33292 West 12 Mile Farmington Hills (248) 489-9777 Serving whitefish, Iamb shank, pastitsio and moussaka X MI till - re Biil 5/19 2000 92 • not to go with any other offer I I with coupon 1 I Expires 12/30/2000 I um ma um mir Nam ow gm ma or am L FRAN HELLER Special to the Jewish News ook at these children. Look at them hard. Betrayed while they lived. Forgotten when they died." Thus begins Marion Wiesel's moving narrative of a new documentary short focusing on the Holocaust's youngest .victims. Titled Children Of The Night and only 18 minutes long, the HBO feature, debuting Thursday, May 25, captures in word and image the collective sorrow and loss in the slaughter of more than 1.3 million innocents by the Nazis. While many still photographs of the mur- dered children exist in Holocaust repositories worldwide, movie footage, as shown here, is quite rare, according to the documentary's writer/narrator and wife of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. Created from archives in Israel, Europe and the United States, the quality of the clips ranges from excellent to fair. The elegaic tones of Bach performed by cellist Yo Yo Ma and Wiesel's sobering commentary set the stage for the sad-eyed procession of visages crowding the screen in numbing repetition. There are no smiles in this relentless sea of anguished, fearful and trembling faces. Though mere children, their emaciated fea- tures and hollow eyes betray their youth, for these are the eyes of men and women grown old before their time. Torn from their mothers and fathers, most look bewildered and uncomprehending as they march arms to shoulders in snake-like queues. The older-looking figure in a later . scene of an overcrowded ghetto cellar is no more than teen-aged. In another image, a child sits.crying on the sidewalk, his tears unnoticed, while another crouches listlessly, with limbs like matchsticks. -- -, Orphans of the street, they survive by beg- ging or hiding, but only until the Gestapo routs them out, as the brief film indicates in graphic detail. Powerful as these images are, even more wrenching is what is missing and the lingering silent question: Where have all the parents gone? The short ends with photographs of actual identified children from Italy, Poland, France, Ukraine, Hungary and elsewhere who were either shot, burned alive or died in the concentration camps. Immediately following Children of the Night is The Last Days, winner of the 1999 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Produced by Stephen Spielberg, this extraordinary film recounts the harrowing tales .bf five Hungarian Jews who survived Hitler's final Anschluss, the invasion and occupation of Hungary and the brutally swift decimation of the largest remaining Jewish population in Europe. Fran Heller is a Cleveland-based freelance writer. ■ ■ ■ ■ Children of the • Holocaust are the • • ■ subject of a new • ■ ■ documentary ■ • short that will be ■ ■ .• aired on HBO. Fifty years later, the film chronicles the return of these five survivors to their Hungarian homeland — to the small villages, urban Budapest and. the labor and concentration camps where they were incarcerated. Archival footage of cattle cars, cre- matoria, mass graves, deci- mated bodies and piles of shoes are interspersed with their personal tales of woe. This exceptional doc- umentary also features commentary from three American liberators and a rare interview with a for- mer Nazi doctor who per- formed medical experi- ments at Auschwitz. One of the survivors interviews the doctor who performed experiments on her sister, but he remains evasive. Another survivor confesses how he had to choose between survival and betrayal of a friend in order to survive Buchenwald. One woman salvages her mother's dia- monds by continuously swallowing and retrieving them. Images of skeletal bodies and mass graves never cease to churn the stomach and deaden the soul. Yet, despite the tragic and painful subject matter, sensitivity, restraint and intel- ligence are the hallmarks of this not-to be-missed film. ❑ .... ............... • Tap to bottom: ■ ■ Three scenes from "Children of the Night": There are no smiles in tlhis relentless s - ell ofanoiShed, Parfill and trembling faces. • ■ ■ A showing of the Academy: AwardT wifining" .The Last Days' Jo' flows "Children of the Night!' Pictured here is survivor Irene Zisblatt, right, • with her childhood houseZecper. Children Of The Night airs 8-8:30 p.m. Thursday, May 25, on HBO. Other playdates: 2 p.m. Saturday, May 27; 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 30; and 9:30 a.m. Monday, June 12. HBO's presentation of The Last Days debuts 8:30 - 10 p.m. Thursday, May 25. Other play- dates: 3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 28; 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 31; 8 a.m. Monday, June 12; and 6:30 p.m. Thursday, June 22.