“People Forget, New Haven Remembers” Debuts

When the community of Holocaust survivors in New Haven raised a memorial to their dead – the first on public land in America – they numbered about 250 strong.

That was 1976. The founders went out to the community, especially the schools, to tell their stories to young New Haveners.

Now there are a dozen left, and they are increasingly unable to perform that critical ​“I was there” role – especially at a moment when anti-Semitic incidents and Holocaust denial are having an ugly resurgence.

A documentary called People Forget, New Haven Remembers will carry on their witnessing when the last New Haven Holocaust survivors are no longer with us.

The half-hour film was produced by the Greater New Haven Holocaust Memory and two of its founders, Fay Sheppard and Doris Zelinsky, who are both children of Holocaust survivors. It will have its TV debut on CPTV and CPTV Spirit on Wednesday, May 6, at 8 p.m. on CPTV Spirit; on Sunday, May 17, at 7:30 p.m. on CPTV; and on Tuesday, May 2,6 at 10:30 p.m. on CPTV.

The documentary chronicles the evolution and aftermath of the New Haven Holocaust Memorial. It also showcases the oral histories of four Holocaust survivors who resettled in New Haven after the war and who worked with then Mayor Frank Logue, the city’s parks officials, and local people to make the memorial a reality: Dr. Ralph Friedman, Helene Rosenberg, Shifra Zamkov, and Hannah Cooperstock.

Since the film was created four years ago by Elena Neuman Lefkowitz of New York-based Neuman Films, two of the main interviewees have died. The film has been shown to various high school and college audiences throughout the area. The May broadcasts on public television will be the first opportunity for the film and its multiple messages of remembrance and warning to be presented to a larger audience.

The time could not be more opportune, Fay Sheppard said in a phone interview.

“There’s an urgency to get it out there. There are Holocaust deniers, and anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head,” Sheppard said, especially on college campuses.

Sheppard appears in the half-hour film showing the suitcase her father, Chaim Shapirka, brought with him to America after his survival. He was one of about 200 who survived out of thousands on a mid-winter ​“death march” as the Nazis fled the concentration camp with their prisoners before the approaching Allied armies.

She said she continues to be astounded by the varied ways the members of her community survived the war.

Helene Rosenberg survived by passing herself as a Christian nurse. Ralph Friedman, who became a dentist, found a way to subsist off the land and stay warm living virtually alone in the winter forests. Shifra Zamkov was hidden by a Christian family in barns and basements.

Remarkably, she lives today being taken care of by great grandchildren of that family, with whom she had stayed in touch over the decades.

In the film, Zamkov says that is a main reason she wants the movie to be out there: To show ​“there were some good people who tried to help and lost their lives.”

The film does a compact job in its 30 minutes, with gripping World War Two archival and interview footage, of giving general historic context and personal story, and then focusing on the unique effort of Elm City survivors to create a place to mourn their dead.

That basic human need, said Sheppard, was the original impetus to approach City Hall with the proposal. Years before the memorial was erected in 1976, some survivors returned to Auschwitz and brought back to New Haven a shoe box of ashes from the camp, which are now interred at the memorial’s site on Whalley Avenue and West Park Street.

For Sheppard the film tells her personal history and that of her community, but it’s more. It’s also a message of warning and remembrance of how mass extermination was ​“codified and justified” by a modern industrial nation. That’s a lesson that needs to be taught also to today’s young Jewish people, she said.

“Unless they’re connected to their grandparents, plenty of young Jewish kids need to be reminded,” she said.

Now the People Forget, New Haven Remembers will be able to help do that job, especially when the last survivors are gone.

While many local survivors have previously contributed their individual testimonies to the Fortunoff Holocaust Archives, housed at Yale University Libraries, this is the first documentary film that tells the story of the New Haven survivors’ community as a whole, Sheppard added.

Fay Sheppard, who helps run the not-for-profit to maintain New Haven’s Holocaust Memorial park, previously discussed the memorial’s history as well as her father’s experiences as a Nazi Holocaust survivor, on WNHH FM’s ​“Chai Haven” program. Click on the above audio file to hear the episode, or watch the Facebook Live version below.