AMHERST — An acclaimed documentary about Avrom Sutzkever, who the New York Times called “the greatest poet of the Holocaust,” will screen at the Amherst Cinema on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m.
“Ver Vet Blaybn?” (Who Will Remain?) tells the story of Sutzkever (born in 1913), a Yiddish poet who lived in Vilnius, Lithuania from about 1921 to 1943. The film also follows his granddaughter, Israeli actress Hadas Kalderon, as she travels to Lithuania to trace his legacy in the city, previously known as Vilna.
“Ver Vet Blaybn?” has racked up a number of awards and nominations at film festivals in the U.S., Europe, Israel, Brazil, Japan, and other places. It was named best documentary at international film festivals in Switzerland and Tel Aviv.
In addition, the documentary has very local roots: It’s been co-directed by Christa Whitney, director of the Wexler Oral History Project at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, and by Emily Felder, who previously worked at the Yiddish Book Center and with Florentine Films in Florence.
Whitney, a graduate of Smith College, also produced “Ver Vet Blaybn?” while Felder, a University of Massachusetts Amherst alumna, edited the film (Felder now lives in Los Angeles and works as an editor and videographer).
Both say the documentary, which they worked on for years, has been a labor of love that aims not just to shine a light on the dramatic life and rich poetry of Sutzkever — he was one of a tiny number of Jews to survive the Vilna ghetto in World War II — but to examine Jewish culture in Vilna before the war.
The film follows Kalderon, carrying her grandfather’s diary, as she visits Lithuania to explore his early life there. Kalderon speaks Hebrew and must rely on translations of her grandfather’s work, but she’s determined to find traces of his bygone world and play her part in preserving his literary legacy.
The documentary also weaves in family home videos, photos and old film footage, newly recorded interviews, and archival recordings, including Sutzkever’s testimony at the Nuremberg Trials and readings of his poetry.
Whitney, in a statement, said it’s a “dream come true to have our western Massachusetts premiere at Amherst Cinema, where both Emily and I fell in love with documentaries and independent movies as undergrads.”
Aside from his poetry, Sutkever also wrote a memoir about surviving the Vilna ghetto, from which he escaped in 1943 to fight with partisans in outlying forests; he later was flown to Moscow by Soviet officials to help write about the destruction of Vilna by the Nazis.
The poet, who died in 2010, moved to Israel in 1947 and became a champion for preserving Yiddish, working to keep alive a language threatened by the loss of so many of its native speakers in the Holocaust.
Following the screening of “Ver Vet Blaybn?” Whitney and Felder will discuss the documentary in a conversation moderated by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Larry Hott of Florentine Films and Hott Productions.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.