Mania Salinger is seen in the film waving at the British soldiers liberating Bergen-Belsen. Liberation! Local woman finds herself in film. Bobbie Lewis Contributing Editor ing an "atrocity film" would be unwise. Footage from the original film was used at the Nuremberg and Luneburg trials t's not the way any woman would of Nazi officers in 1945 and in a short propaganda film, Death Mills, made by want to make her screen debut. American Billy Wilder. Mania Salinger of West Bloomfield was 21 when the Bergen-Belsen concen- Salinger recalls how she became one of tration camp was liberated on April 15, the first to greet the camp's liberators. "I was sick; I had an infection in my 1945. She and a few of the other women still able to walk ran to the gate to greet arm — if you look carefully at the photo the British soldiers. you can see my arm is swollen — and The moment was captured by a British a fever; she said. "When I woke up that army cameraman as part of an effort to morning I was hot, so I went to get water. document the closing days of World War I looked at the guard tower and I saw II. There's Mania front and center, with a there were no Germans there. I looked big smile, waving. at another tower; no Germans. I started On Jan. 26, Salinger and her family screaming and just ran to the fence": watched that bit of film, now part of Salinger said it's always difficult to see a documentary, Night Will Fall. It was photos and films of the concentration recently shown by HBO in the United camps. What most upset her about Night States and by other broadcasters around Will Fall were scenes showing the mass the world, and is available on HBO and burial of the dead in enormous pits. The Xfmity On Demand. liberating soldiers had to do this quickly, The film tells the story of another so they dragged and carried the bodies documentary, blandly titled German without ceremony — "like throwing Concentration Camps Factual Survey, them in the garbage," Salinger said. commissioned by the British Another Detroiter may also Ministry of Information to have been in the original film. record the Allied military vic- Viola "Rivka" Klein, now of tory in Europe. Palm Springs, Calif., was 18 and Night Will Fall includes a very ill with typhus when the recent interview with Salinger, British liberated Bergen-Belsen. who said she knew the camp She remembers being filmed had been liberated when she in the infirmary and as she was noticed there were no German Mania S alinger evacuated by stretcher. guards in the watch tower. "My mom told me Anne Frank For the original project, producer was in her barrack:' said Fran Klein Sidney Bernstein recruited an impressive Parker of West Bloomfield. She said Anne team, including director Alfred Hitchcock was the only one infected with typhus and script writer Richard Grossman, who who fought to live, and my mother later became a Labour cabinet minister. helped feed het" Because only about 12 They used hundreds of reels of film sent minutes of the original footage were used by British, American and Soviet camera- in the new film, Parker wasn't sure if her men, both soldiers and civilian news- mother was in it. "There were so many men, documenting the harrowing scenes people, and it went by so fast; she said. that greeted troops when they liberated The original documentary has been 11 camps, including Bergen-Belsen, completed by scholars at Britain's Auschwitz and Dachau. Imperial War Museum. It was shown The original film project was shelved at the London Film Festival in October for 70 years. Some speculate that the and at the Museum of Tolerance in Los British didn't want to alienate the Angeles and the Holocaust Memorial Germans, whom they needed as allies in Center in San Antonio in late January, the Cold War against the Soviet Union. but there are no plans to screen it more Others feel the film was too sensitive to widely. show at a time when Britain was resist- The title for the film-about-the- ing Zionists agitating for a Jewish state in film comes from the end of Richard British-mandate Palestine. Grossman's script: "Unless the world No reason for scrapping the project learns the lesson these pictures teach, was given except for a memo from the night will fall. But, by God's grace, we British Foreign Office that said screen- who live will learn:' I ❑ 10 February 12 • 2015 Alan Rosen Inventive Calendars Author's talk to focus on how Holocaust Jews marked time. Yaffa Klugerman Special to the Jewish News I magine Jewish life without a Jewish calendar. Suppose, for a minute, that we had no idea when to celebrate holidays and observe fasts. When would we blow the shofar? When would we light the menorah? When would we eat matzah? That, says Holocaust scholar Alan Rosen, was the problem faced by Jews in ghettos, camps and in hiding during the Holocaust. How did Jews develop ways to track time? Rosen's upcoming talk, "Killing Time, Saving Time: Calendars and the Holocaust," answers this question and uncovers the innovative methods Jews used. The Feb. 17 lecture is sponsored by the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. The author or editor of 10 books, Rosen became interested in timekeeping during the Holocaust after interview- ing victims who said they placed a high value on keeping track of the sacred days of the Jewish calendar. He conducted research using Jewish calendars from public and personal archives from that time, and discovered that people were very resourceful with the ways in which they determined the proper dates for Jewish observance. He says people kept handwritten cal- endars, some kept track of the moon, and one woman tied knots in her skirt daily to know when Shabbat would arrive. "Almost no one has given attention to wartime calendars and the amazing aspects of wartime life they reveal; he said. "So I've had to assemble my own inventory of these calendars" Keeping calendars during the Holocaust, says Anita Norich, U-M's Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor, sheds light on how people tried to sustain tradition and some modicum of control during unbearably chaotic times. "People ground themselves in the calendar:' said Norich, who arranged Rosen's visit. "What happens to your sense of time under such traumatic con- ditions? How do you keep track of per- sonal and religious dates? Why does it matter? These are some of the questions that will be addressed:' Rosen was born and raised in Los Angeles and now lives in Jerusalem. He was educated in Boston under the direc- tion of Elie Wiesel. Rosen has held fel- lowships and taught at numerous presti- gious institutions, most recently serving as the Wilkenfeld Scholar in Holocaust Education in Sydney, Australia. He also lectures regularly on Holocaust literature at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies and other Holocaust study centers. Ultimately, Rosen says, his research on the Holocaust sheds light on remarkable perseverance. "I am particularly drawn to how Jewish victims brought meaning to their experience, stage by stage, as it unfold- or he said. "It is crucial to learn about strategies of continuity in the midst of tremendous upheaval." ❑ Alan Rosen's lecture, "Killing Time, Saving Time: Calendars and the Holocaust," will be held at 4 p.m. Feb. 17 at 202 S. Thayer St., Room 2022, in Ann Arbor. The event is free and open to the public. Yaffa Klugerman is a program associate at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.