"If not for the Holocaust, my parents would never have met and I would never have been born, so I have always felt a profound sense of irony about the Holocaust."
Steve Besserman
The Mercer CountyHolocaust-Genocide Resource Center and Congregation Beth Chaim of Princeton Junction, NJ, are commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day with a screening of Only A Number a documentary of Holocaust survival by Hamilton, NJ filmmaker Steve Besserman.
Only A Number is the autobiography of Besserman’s mother, Aranka, a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp. A powerful narrative, Only A Number is as much a love story as it is a Holocaust memoir. It was in a slave labor camp that Aranka fell in love with Josef, the man who would eventually become her husband. Using his mother’s diary as his guide, Besserman journeys through the sites of the ghettos, concentration camps, and slave-labor factories, reflecting on his mother’s experiences and how they have impacted him as a second-generation survivor.
In 2011 alone, Only A Number was recognized as an Official Selection of the Garden State Film Festival, the Best FeatureDocumentary at the Jersey Shore Film Festival, an Official Selection of the Santa Rosa Film Festival, and nominated for Best Documentary at the Orlando Film Festival. A special edition of Only A Number accompanied by a Study Guide has been recommended by the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education to middle and high schools for use in the curriculum with students in grades 7-12.
Filmmaker Steve Besserman will take questions from the audience and discuss his experiences making the film after the screening. DVDs will be made available for purchase after the program.
The event is free and open to the public. It will be held Wednesday, April 18, at 7 pm at Congregation Beth Chaim, 329 Village Road East, Princeton Junction, NJ, 08550. For directions, please visit Beth Chaim’s website at: http://www.bethchaim.org.
