The Last Survivor

On Thursday, May 3, as part of its 2012 Holocaust Film Series, the Institute for Holocaust Education, in cooperation with Film Streams, screened the film The Last Survivor. The Ruth Sokolof Theater welcomed approximately 150 guests to watch the documentary which traces the stories of survivors from four different genocides: the Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, and the Congo.

Providing their testimonies, each survivor described their lives before the genocides that tore their families from them as well as their varied routes of survival afterwards. Two of the films’ participants are active in leading and organizing for change in governments and one survivor became a psychologist to help other survivors in recovery. The film focused largely on the personal impact of living through a genocide or mass-atrocity.

A panel discussion including one of the film’s directors, Michael Kleiman, child survivor of the Holocaust, Bea Karp, and Executive Director of the Institute for Holocaust Education, Beth Dotan, was held following the film. Many of those in attendance asked about ways to help speak out on current, on-going acts of brutality and murders throughout the world. Kleiman suggested that, “Elected officials are not voted out of office for not intervening in genocides,” and perhaps a public change to this approach could force more world-wide intervention. Bea Karp agreed, adding, “Heads of state should think less about their [politics] and more about individuals.” On the importance of drawing attention to these atrocities and remembering them, Kleiman said, “When Hitler was planning his final solution and he was asked how he’d get away with it, he said, ‘Who remembers the Armenians [the systematic decimation of Armenians by the Ottoman government beginning in 1915]?’” 

The Last Survivor was the final film in the three film series which also included Swimming in Auschwitz which follows the story of six women who survived the Holocaust and A Film Unfinished which examines the early days of the Warsaw ghetto.