A Son Tells His Mother's Holocaust Story In NJDOCS: Only A Number
originally published: 04/22/2017
As Holocaust Remembrance Day comes to a close, the fourth season of NJTV'sNJDocs series opens on Monday, April 24 at 10:00pm with the documentary, Only a Number by New Jersey filmmaker Steve Besserman.
Besserman's parents are both Holocaust survivors. Several years before she was stricken with dementia, his mother, Aranka, began to write memories of her experience in a concentration camp, including how she met and fell in love with her husband-to-be through a barbed-wire fence. In this documentary, Besserman weaves his mother's diaries together with his own modern-day journey to the ghettos and camps of which she wrote.
On the film's website, Besserman writes, "Over 35 years ago, she documented the horrors she endured at the hands of the Nazis and how she met my father, Josef, in a concentration camp, separated by barbed wire, physically and psychologically ravaged by starvation and brutality. And yet, they fell in love, giving each other the strength and will to survive."
"In this documentary I journey to the sites of the ghettos, concentration camps and slave-labor factories as they are today, finding visual remnants of the past in the present," continued the filmmaker. "What lies within the tangles of my mother’s memory, lies beneath these locations that time may have changed, but can never truly erase."
For more information on the film or to purchase the DVD visit www.onlyanumber.net
NJDocs premiered in February 2012 as a showcase for the best student-driven documentaries coming out of NJ colleges and universities. On June 3, 2013 NJDocs blossomed into a series that features both student and professional filmmakers who illustrate what is important, poignant, and perhaps under-discovered through the art of documentary film -- New Jersey filmmakers reaching beyond New Jersey and filmmakers from outside the state exploring issues of concern and interest to New Jerseyans.
PHOTO: NJ Filmmaker Steven H. Besserman and Director of Photography Gerardo Puglia on location for the production of Only a Number, filmed in Hungary, Poland and Germany.
(ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS, NJ) -- FilmOneFest will be holding a fundraiser and food drive with a "Best of" FilmOneFest event at Smodcastle Cinemas on Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 7:00pm. The event includes crowd favorites from years past.
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On the film's website, Besserman writes, "Over 35 years ago, she documented the horrors she endured at the hands of the Nazis and how she met my father, Josef, in a concentration camp, separated by barbed wire, physically and psychologically ravaged by starvation and brutality. And yet, they fell in love, giving each other the strength and will to survive." 
