Special Event – Film Screening, Visiting Filmmaker & Panel Discussion
“Memories of the Eichmann Trial”
New England Premiere of New Digital Restoration
Special Guest Israeli Filmmaker: Yael Perlov
Panel Discussion: Laura Jockusch, Sharon Pucker Rivo, Jonathan Sarna
Introduction: Liat Benhabib, Director of Yad Vashem’s Visual Center
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
7:00 pm – Free – In Person
Wasserman Cinematheque, Brandeis University, Waltham MA
David Perlov’s 1979 documentary Memories of the Eichmann Trial reveals the trial’s pivotal role in Israeli society through intimate interviews with Holocaust survivors, Israelis of the second generation, and others directly involved in the case, including trial witness Rafi Eitan, who led the Mossad operation to capture Eichmann in Argentina, and survivor Henryk Ross who, with the help of his wife Stefania, took clandestine photographs of life in the Lodz Ghetto. (Ross’s photos were exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2017).
David Perlov, often called the “father of Israeli documentary cinema,” does an extraordinary job drawing out his subjects whom he interviewed in crisp 16mm eighteen years after the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann.
Broadcast only once on Israeli television, the film was rediscovered and restored by the Perlov family in partnership with the Yad Vashem Visual Center, with support from the Forum for the Preservation of Audio-Visual Memory in Israel.
Special Guest: Yael Perlov
Award-winning filmmaker Yael Perlov has produced and/or edited more than 50 films, including Late Marriageand Ben Gurion, Epilogue (NCJF film festival 2017). She has taught cinema at Tel Aviv University since 1990, and her documentary series “Water,” created by her Israeli and Palestinian film students, opened the Critics’ Week of Venice Film Festival in 2012. Yael began filmmaking alongside her father David Perlov and, since his death in 2003, she has been preserving his work.
Jonathan Sarna is University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History and Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He is also past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Laura Jockusch is Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University. Her publications include the edited volume (with Gabriel Finder) Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust.
Sharon Pucker Rivo, Executive Director and Co-Founder of The National Center for Jewish Film, is a leading force in the field of Jewish film through her work as a curator, archivist, film distributor, film producer, and academic. She teaches “Film and the Holocaust” at Brandeis University.
– PRESENTED BY –
The National Center for Jewish Film
Consulate General of Israel to New England
Center for German & European Studies, Brandeis University
Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University
Hebrew Language Program, Brandeis University
Department of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
Screening of the film courtesy of the Yad Vashem Visual Center, the Perlov Family & KAN 11 Israeli Broadcasting Corp
