Arts & Entertainment
ON THE COVER/At‘
Introducing David Friend
D
avid Friend, the author of
Watching the World Change:
The Stories Behind the
Images of 9-11, is a multitalented jour-
nalist.
Currently Vanity Fair's editor of cre-
ative development, he is active in writ-
ing, editing, photography, movie-making
and cartooning. As a correspondent, he
has covered conflicts in Afghanistan,
Lebanon and elsewhere. His articles on
photographic and news subjects appear
in Vanity Fair, American Photo and
on the Digital Journalist Web site. His
humorous articles and cartoons have
appeared in publications including the
Washington Post and the online journal
Salon; he has had poetry printed in the
New Yorker and has curated intense
exhibitions of photography at the
United Nations and other venues.
.
Friend won Emmy and Peabody
awards as an executive producer of the
CBS documentary 9-11, which has been
shown in more than 140 countries.
Watching the World Change is more
than a collection of photographs and
anecdotes about the people who took
them. Although the book does contain
dozens of striking photos and tells
many exciting, tragic and poignant sto-
ries, it also examines the rapid changes
in how we store, transmit and process
information of all sorts and how these
changes affect our culture.
At 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7, Friend
will give a presenta-
tion at the Jewish
Community Center in
West Bloomfield, as
Book Fair honors local
heroes, the police and
fire departments of
West Bloomfield and
Farmington Hills. The
event is co-sponsored
by the Center's Building
Services and Technical
Support departments,
West Bloomfield Police
and Fire departments,
Farmington Hills Police
and Fire departments
and Tam-O-Shanter Country Club.
There is no charge.
Q: In the rush to cover the story of
9-11, some photographs were printed
or broadcast that people felt were
in poor taste, while others were held
back for that same reason. The ques-
tion still remains: Should we print
gruesome photos?
A: At the time, there was what I call
the "dayenu effect" — the country had
lost about 3,000 people — we'd seen
enough. You didn't have to see beyond
the core horror of the thing itself to
understand how horrific it was.
Now that five years
have passed, I think it's
important to see beyond
the core of the initial
attack.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
made a documentary for
HBO called In Memoriam.
At the premiere, which I
attended, he said some-
thing to the effect of, "If
we shy away from the
truth, we won't remem-
ber this terrible event
properly, and, if we don't
remember it properly, it
could happen again."
Through memory — and photography
assists this memory — we retain our
backbone.
I am hesitant to compare 9-11 to the
Holocaust. But I am comparing the
need for evidentiary memory in both
instances.
Introducing Daniel Mendelsohn
C
ritic and author Daniel
Mendelsohn, whose literary
work has covered topics from
the ancient Greeks to contemporary
novelists, recounts a passionate explo-
ration into the history of his own family
in his new book, The Lost: A Search for
Six of Six Million.
Even as a young child, Mendelsohn
was fascinated by his grandfather's
tales of growing up in the Ukrainian vil-
lage of Bolechow at the turn of the cen-
tury. The two would pore over dog-eared
photos in stiff black albums. But when
they came to a page with photos of his
oldest brother, Shmiel, his grandfather
would turn away.
The only information the boy learned
about Shmiel, his wife and four daugh-
ters - was that theyd been "killed by the
Nazis." Decades later, Mendelsohn trav-
eled to 12 countries on four continents
before learning enough to put a flesh
and blood history behind the shadowy
figures who'd posed for photos so many
years before.
In addition to sifting through myth
64
October 26 2006
and memory to arrive at a tentative
truth, Mendelsohn devotes a large part
of the book to his explorations of Jewish
philosophy and history and how they
relate to the epochal experiences of the
Jews in the 20th century.
Mendelsohn speaks
about his book at 8:15
p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9, at
the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield.
His talk is co-sponsored by
CHAIM, the Shul-Chabad
Lubavitch, Michigan State
University Jewish Studies
Program .and Temple Kol
Ami Sisterhood. There is
.no charge.
Q: Why dO you think
you were willing to devote
so much time and travel so far to track
down the fates of your great-uncle and
his. family?
A: Partly, I think, it was because I was
the closest to my grandfather. Also from
a very young age, I was told I resembled
so much my grandfather's brother.
And, of the many, many stories he told
about Bolechow, he never mentioned his
brother Shmiel.
I could not rest content with the
information that they were
killed by the Nazis in World
War II. These were individ-
ual people — they deserve
individual stories.
In my late 30s, I started
to think I could go back
to the scene of the crime.
Months after coming back
from Boiechow, I got a call
from Australia — a man
said he was the boyfriend
of one of Shmiel's daugh-
ters. He told me there
were five Bolechow survi-
vors there.
At the time, there were only 12 living
Bolechow survivors in all.
Q: Would it have been possible
to bring Shmiel and his family to
America?
Q: As technology advances, the
photos we see are not necessarily a
true representation. How do we guard
against the manipulation of images?
A: You can't. It's like asking, "How do
you guard against the manipulation of
ideas?" You need to have truth-tellers.
Hopefully, that's what the media is for.
You need journalists and historians
and people who have lost loved ones to
be in constant pursuit of the truth, as
a bulwark against people who are out
to twist reality and history to their own
ends.
0: Did you learn anything from writ-
ing this book?
A: Everyone has a 9-11 story; every-
one feels they're part of the big nar-
rative — and they are. Our individual,
trivial lives matter. It's a religious way
of looking at things.
People come to me and they want
to buy the book for their younger chil-
dren, so they will have a sense of what
we all went through.
- Diana Lieberman
A: I'm sure anything that could have
been done was done.
First, you have to remember, you had
to raise a huge amount of money, not
just for passage to bring relatives over,
but to place a deposit to assure they
would not be a burden on America.
Then, by 1939, which is when they
were getting desperate, you couldn't
get anyone out if you wanted. I know my
grandfather did send money. But, still,
we only have half the correspondence
-- the letters his brother wrote to him,
not his answers.
Q: What does your individual story
have to say to the rest of us?
A: I am profoundly aware that my
generation is the last who had personal
contact with survivors of the Holocaust.
It's also about identity —"this is who we
would have been if things had been dif-
ferent.
In another sense, every family in
America has stories like this about the
old country — it may be 13 generations
ago or, like my family, it may be one
generation.: ___ !
- Diana Lieberman