[Leica] OT: my French family in film

[images at comporium.net (Tina Manley)]

Congratulations to your family, Nathan!  The film will help us remember
history, so we won't repeat it.  Have a great time in Paris!

Tina

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> 
wrote:

> Around 1920 my granduncle Shmuel (Samuel) Wajsman emigrated from Lublin in
> Poland to Paris in search of a better life. There, he and his wife did
> indeed build a new life, under the name Weismann, courtesy a French
> immigration official who had trouble with our Polish-Yiddish name. In 
> Paris,
> they had 3 children, two girls and a boy, the latter named Joseph and born
> in 1931.
>
> In 1942 the Vichy government rounded up French Jews at the behest of the
> Germans. Most ended up in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, including Joseph's
> entire family. But not Joseph. He escaped the French holding camp together
> with another boy. They made their way back to Paris only to find empty
> apartments, and parted company there. Joseph eventually was whisked off to 
> a
> village in the Loire Valley where he was taken in by the villagers and
> pretended to be just another French village boy.
>
> After the war, Joseph settled in Le Mans and became an apprentice in a
> furniture shop. He later took over that shop and built a successful 
> business
> on that basis. For the first 10 years or so after 1945 he was unaware that
> any part of his family in Poland had survived the war. He assumed that
> everyone had met the same terrible fate as his parents and sisters, and
> anyway he had never had any contact with his Polish family as a child. 
> Then,
> one day in 1957 or 58, my father "found" him. How it happened is another
> story. But it did happen, and Joseph discovered that he was not alone in 
> the
> world as he thought. Since then he has been incredibly devoted to the whole
> family. He attends all family gatherings and major events, whether in
> Europe, the US or Israel.
>
> Since he retired, Joseph has devoted much of his life and energy to telling
> the story to schools, civic groups etc. around France. He is usually one of
> the people who gives a little speech at the annual 8th May celebration in
> front of the prefecture in Le Mans. During the past couple of years he has
> been collaborating with the director and screenwriter of a feature film
> about his life:
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1382725/
>
> It may not be a Hollywood blockbuster, but it is a substantial film with
> some well-known actors. For Joseph, who has strived so much to tell the
> story, this is of major importance--this film will be seen by a 100 times
> more people than he has reached so far with his message of "never again".
>
> And now the big moment has arrived. The film will be released in the
> Francophone world on Wednesday, and on Monday evening there is the
> "official" avant-premiere organized by Gaumont on Champs-Elys?es. We will 
> be
> there together with our French family, to celebrate this big event on our
> family's history.
>
> Over the years, I have shown many pictures of Joseph here on the LUG, for
> example:
> http://www.nathanfoto.com/paw/20.jpg
> http://www.nathanfoto.com/L2002_39_3.jpg
> http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws/uploads/2008/32alt2.jpg
> (the last one at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin in the summer of 2008)
>
> This is all a long way of saying that I am off to Paris on
> Saturday--besides the film, I want to take my daughter to the Louvre and I
> want to visit the graves of two very different musical geniuses at the P?re
> Lachaise cemetery, Chopin and Jim Morrison. And, if the weather permits, to
> violate French laws and take some people pictures in the Jardin du
> Luxembourg and other similar spots.
>
>
> Nathan
>
> Nathan Wajsman
> Alicante, Spain
>
>
> _
>
-- 
Tina Manley, ASMP
www.tinamanley.com