Arnold Fabrikant: Jewish Soldier’s Red Star

With an introduction and epilogue narrated by Sixty Minutes correspondent Morley Safer, here is a story, produced by Brad Rothschild and Gustavo Villalonga in New York, of a Soviet Jewish soldier from the Ukrainian city of Odessa.

Arnold Fabrikant introduces us to his parents, who were both doctors. When war came, Arnold’s father served as surgeon in Kiev, and rather than be taken prisoner by the Germans, shot himself. While Arnold’s mother fled to Central Asia during the war, Arnold served in an artillery unit and fought all the way to the center of Berlin.

At war’s end, Arnold went looking for his girlfriend Natasha. When they married, they were so poor Arnold had only his army uniform; Nathasha’s shoe soles were made of wood.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arnold became an active member in the Front Line Veteran’s Committee, where elderly Jewish veterans meet each month and talk of the times when these Jews fought the Nazis – and won.

Read the complete biography of Arnold Fabrikant here.

Find more information in our comprehensive Study Guide.

Haya-Lea Detinko: Surviving Stalin’s Gulag

Haya-Lea was born in 1920 in Rovno, which then belonged to Poland. She grew up in a traditional Jewish family, joined a Zionist youth club called Hashomer Hatzair and looked forward to emigrating to Palestine, just like her sister. But the Soviets took eastern Poland in September 1939 and Haya-Lea’s membership in Hashomer Hatzair earned her a ten year sentence of hard labor in Siberia. The rest of her family remained behind, not knowing that the Nazis would overrun the town soon after Haya-Lea’s deportation to the east.

Haya-Lea survived the Gulag and moved to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), where she shared her story with Centropa in 2002. This film is dedicated to Haya-Lea, who died shortly after the interview.

Read the complete biography of Haya-Lea Detinko here.

Find more information in our comprehensive Study Guide.

Return to Rivne – A Holocaust Story

Centropa’s most unusual film to date. Shelly Weiner and Raya Kizhnerman live in Greensboro, NC. But these two kindly grandmothers were born in the bustling city of Rivne—then in Poland, now in Ukraine. In 1941 20,000 Jews lived in Rivne, but when the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS stormed into town, they planned on murdering every Jew they could find. How Shelly and Raya survived the massacre is a story they tell themselves, not long after they visited Rivne in 2013. With old photographs and exquisite, custom-made drawings by artist Emma Fick. Motion graphics by Wolfgang Els.

Find more information in our comprehensive Study Guide.