Spielberg in Ukraine to promote Holocaust documentary (10/29/06)

Spielberg in Ukraine to promote Holocaust documentary

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - "Finally, I am in my homeland."

With these words, legendary film director Steven Spielberg on October 18 greeted his friend Victor Pinchuk when setting foot in Ukraine for the first time to promote "Spell Your Name," a documentary film about the Holocaust in Ukraine that they jointly produced and financed.

Produced on a $1 million budget and directed by Ukrainian Sergey Bukovsky, "Spell Your Name" is a 90-minute testimony featuring the harrowing accounts of Holocaust survivors and their rescuers, employing aesthetic, visuals in recreating the era's mood and atmosphere.

"Spell Your Name's" premiere marked a landmark step in Ukraine's long overdue process of reconciling with its past horrors, which includes the Holocaust and the Great Famine of 1932-1933, a genocide against the Ukrainian people known as the Holodomor.

"I really believe that listening to the stories of Holocaust survivors from all around the world is going to change the world, and it already has in many ways," Mr. Spielberg told a Kyiv press conference of about 100 journalists, photographers and cameramen, some arriving from Moscow.

"A film like this is certainly going to bring tremendous attention to the Holocaust in the [sic] Ukraine, at Babyn Yar and in hundreds of towns and villages throughout the [sic] Ukraine where Jews were rounded up and liquidated."

Mr. Bukovsky said he made the film under two conditions set by Douglas Greenberg, the executive director of the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.

First, the film had to be based on the Shoah Foundation's archive of testimonies from Holocaust survivors in Ukraine, which total close to 3,500 - more than any other European country.

Second, Mr. Bukovsky was free to make the film however he wished.

"I appreciate that our producers, Victor Pinchuk and Steven Spielberg and Doug Greenburg, kept their word and gave us full freedom of activity with such complicated, not simple materials," Mr. Bukovsky said.

"Spell Your Name" (Nazvy Svoe Imia) is among the best documentaries on the Holocaust, Mr. Spielberg said, and Mr. Bukovsky is a great documentarian who conceived and arranged the film's content on his own.

The film uses visual watercolors to paint a mood and set a tone that is very similar to the survivors' stories, he said, through the use of interstitial visuals such as rain, leaves and views from windows.

Producing "Spell Your Name" is merely the first phase of the Shoah Foundation's project, said Mr. Pinchuk, a Jew who is active in Ukraine's Jewish community.

The second phase, into which Mr. Pinchuk said he will invest at least $1 million, will involve distributing the film to Ukraine's television networks, as well as schools and universities. "The film is merely a starting point for this project, and it will be distributed," he said.

"Today, I received a phone call from a famous Ukrainian businessman who said, 'Victor, I want to buy the rights to this film and I want to show it in my city, and the city's schools.' I said, 'Okay, we will do it for you, but free-of-charge'."

Distribution will begin sometime during the winter season, said Mr. Pinchuk, a billionnaire who is Ukraine's second wealthiest man.

For example, 520,000 schools in Bavaria, Germany, teach tolerance using the Shoah Foundation's education curriculum, Mr. Spielberg noted.

Many such educational projects have been undertaken by the Shoah Foundation, which was created by Mr. Spielberg with the profit he earned from "Schindler's List," his film about Oskar Schindler, an industrialist who rescued 1,200 Jews by enabling them to work in his factories.

The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) has reported that Mr. Spielberg earned a $60 million profit from the film.

"I didn't take a single dollar from the profits I received from 'Schindler's List' because I did consider it blood money," Mr. Spielberg said in a 2004 interview with Katie Couric.

"When I first decided to make 'Schindler's List,' I said if this movie makes any profit, it can't go to me or my family. It has to go out to the world and that's what we try to do here at the Shoah Foundation. We try to teach the facts of the past to prevent another Holocaust in the future," he said.

Since its inception in 1994, the Shoah Foundation has recorded and archived more than 52,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors and their rescuers.

Mr. Spielberg created the Shoah Foundation (the Hebrew word for catastrophe) in order to create the largest archive of survivor testimonies from all around the world.

"When the survivors are no longer with us, their stories will be with my children and they'll be teaching my children about the consequences of not reaching out and attempting to better get to know each other," he told the Kyiv press conference.

Mr. Pinchuk said he suggested to several citizens' organizations that they begin gathering the memories of witnesses who lived through the Holodomor and the Chornobyl disaster using the same archiving technology that Mr. Spielberg and the Shoah Foundation used.

When asked by BBC reporter Marta Shokalo whether he wants to or will produce a film about Ukraine's Holodomor, Mr. Pinchuk revealed that he supports the idea, but doesn't necessarily believe he should be the torchbearer, as was the case with "Spell Your Name."

"I thought about how there should be a trilogy of the three main tragedies in Ukraine's history - the Holodomor, the Holocaust and Chornobyl," said Mr. Pinchuk. "I am not sure that I should take part in the realization of this trilogy, but I believe such films should be made."

In his remarks, Mr. Pinchuk referred to the Holodomor as a "tragedy," not genocide.

Mr. Pinchuk said he met Mr. Spielberg while his family was visiting New Jersey two years ago. The director invited Mr. Pinchuk and his family to the set of "War of the Worlds," where the two billionaires began discussing the Holocaust.

"He probably told me more new things about Babyn Yar than what I told him," Mr. Pinchuk said.

"I learned from him during our first meeting that Babyn Yar was the first example of the Holocaust during the second world war, and practically in human history. I learned that from him. I didn't have to interest him because he knew more than I did."

Mr. Pinchuk decided a film had to be done about the Holocaust in Ukraine.

They met again, and though Mr. Pinchuk wanted a creative film, Mr. Spielberg insisted on a documentary based on the Shoah archives.

"Mr. (Spielberg) said 'I am ready to produce this film and I will go to Ukraine because I want to,' " Mr. Pinchuk said. "And today when he stepped off the airplane steps, his first words were, 'Finally, I am in my homeland.'"

All four of Mr. Spielberg's Jewish grandparents were from the Odesa region of Ukraine, he said, and they spoke only Russian and Yiddish. "I kind of felt that I had a piece of the [sic] Ukraine in my home, especially around dinner time," Mr. Spielberg said.

Though professing to being "very, very familiar" with Ukrainian culture, Mr. Spielberg revealed he, in fact, could use some brushing up. He repeatedly referred to his grandparents' homeland as "the Ukraine," a term once widely used to refer to what was once considered a region of Russia.

Mr. Spielberg did acknowledge the Famine of 1932-1933. However, in his response to a question posed to him about the Holodomor during the 50-minute press conference, Mr. Spielberg carefully avoided referring to it as genocide.

Journalist Olena Bilozemska of the newspaper Zamkova Hora pointed out that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is trying to get recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian people, just as the Holocaust was directed against the Jewish people.

She asked: "Do you believe the polarization of these two tragedies can have a negative effect because enemies of both nations can consider that these nations are weak and can be destroyed without consequence?"

Mr. Spielberg responded: "No, I don't agree that people of the world will perceive the Ukrainian people as being weak for wanting to bring to the attention of the world something that happened here that was of tragic and terrible proportions."

"But I also don't believe in comparing one holocaust to another. I think that only gets you in trouble if you start to compare holocausts to say that my holocaust was worse than your holocaust," Mr. Spielberg continued.

"The Holocaust that I've devoted my life to is the Shoah that took place between 1935 and 1945 and that's the Holocaust that I'm trying to bring to the world's attention," he said.

"There were many other disasters that have happened to people all around the world, that have happened to the Ukrainian people, that should have documentaries produced about those stories, and I think that's very important. And I think those documentaries will find instant access to schools all around the countries," Mr. Spielberg added.

When the press conference drew to a close, The Weekly directly posed a question to the filmmaker: "Mr. Spielberg, do you believe the Famine of 1932-1933 was a genocide against the Ukrainian people?"

A spokesman for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Nikita Poturaev, interrupted any potential response, preventing Mr. Spielberg from answering The Weekly's question. "This question was already posed, and I am going to decline it," Mr. Poturaev said.

"Nobody asked this question yet," The Weekly responded.

"Sorry," Mr. Poturaev said.

"Nobody asked this question," The Weekly repeated.

"We had some questions about the Holodomor during the press conference so unfortunately ... last question, please," Mr. Poturaev said, moving the press conference along.

After Mr. Pinchuk met Mr. Spielberg at the airport, the first thing they did was visit Babyn Yar. They placed stones at each of the monuments and paid their respects in what Mr. Spielberg described as a moving moment.

Mr. Pinchuk said he was imagining what it would have been like to have stood in line, facing an inevitable execution. He said he felt lucky that his grandparents managed to avoid execution. One grandfather was an economist in a military factory, while another was a Red Army officer. Both were able to evacuate their families.

"My grandfathers, grandmothers left and, had they not left, they would have been here," Mr. Pinchuk said of Babyn Yar. "And I would not be here. So I had such thoughts."

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