Newark Academy welcomed filmmaker Aviva Slesin for the 2014 Feinberg Multicultural Assembly.

 

Aviva is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. In 2003, she produced and directed Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During World War II, which was nominated for two Emmys. During World War II, tens of thousands of Jewish children were saved from almost certain death by non-Jewish neighbors, friends, or even strangers. What happened between these children, their parents, and rescuers is the focus of Secret Lives.

During her visit to NA Aviva discussed her own experience during the war. Born in Lithuania, Aviva was hidden as baby during the last years of World War II by a Christian family. "We were called the 'lucky' children," Aviva said. "We were lucky because we survived, but not lucky in the circumstances of our survival." Some children never saw their biological parents again. Others were re-united with their parents after the war, only to find it difficult to bond, yet again, with a “new” parent. Many carried a sense of abandonment throughout their lives. These experiences shaped the identities of the hidden children into their adulthood.

As an adult, Aviva returned to Lithuania to re-connect with the family that saved her life. She also interviewed dozens of hidden children and their rescuers for Secret Lives. The families in the film came from all walks of life, with surprisingly few commonalities, other than their extraordinary capacity for kindness and humanity. In describing the enormous risks that the rescuers took to hide Jewish children from the atrocities of the Holocaust, Aviva said, “The concept of goodness can be as mysterious as the concept of evil.”