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ARTS AND CULTURE
The Jewish Voice
APRIL 7, 2017
Digging History: Documentary Details Holocaust Escape, Unearths Buried Tunnel By: Deborah Fineblum
E
ver since Michael Kagan, 60, was a boy growing up in the U.K., each detail of his father’s escape from a Nazi labor camp has ricocheted through his mind and heart. Now, in his new documentary “Tunnel of Hope,” the son is sharing his father’s story with the world. It’s a story that Jack Kagan had fought to keep alive, recording not only the escape, but the murders of the vast majority of the Jews of Novogrudok—a city in Belarus—who were dead long before that fateful night. “He was driven, determined to get it out there,” says Michael Kagan. Among his father’s projects was creating a museum at the escape site and marble monuments marking the slain Jews’ graves. The risky escape plan was born of increasing desperation by the 240 Jews clinging to life in the Novogrudok labor camp. It was a ragtag group, the last survivors of some 11,000 Jews from the town and adjacent villages—their ranks decimated by two major slaughters in 1941 and 1942, along with starvation and illness. Jack Kagan was 13 when the tunnel escape plan was hatched in the summer of 1943. Having lost all 10 toes to frostbite, he was recovering from their am-
putation when he overheard the adults, led by Berel Yoselevich, formulate the plan. It would take three months of painstaking labor, with the prisoners covering for each other in the camp’s shoemaking and woodworking factories, to excavate the 2-by-2-foot tunnel destined to carry them to freedom in late September. Among those who made it out that night, two-thirds survived the war, with most of them—including Jack Kagan— escaping to the forest and joining the famed Bielski partisans. Some nine months later, in June 1944, Kagan was among those liberated by the Soviets. His son, Michael, who lives in Jerusalem, shared the idea for a film with family friend Murray Kushner—the uncle of President Donald Trump’s son-inlaw, Jared Kushner. He received Kushner’s pledge of support and recruited Dror Shwartz, a filmmaker who has worked at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center. In 2012, Michael Kagan and Shwartz scouted the former Novogrudok labor camp site, now an agricultural college, ultimately winning permission to bring in escapees’ descendants to dig for the tunnel. Three of the escapees, including Jack Kagan, were among the 55 family members who made the trip from Israel, the U.K. and the U.S. that year.
Scene from Michael Kagan’s new documentary “Tunnel of Hope”
with context for the prisoners’ growing desperation and willingness to risk everything for a slim chance at survival. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, Kagan simply takes off his shoe, revealing a foot without toes. A handful of prisoners, either fearful of Nazi retribution or too weak to crawl through the tunnel, turned down the opportunity to escape. The next day, those remaining quickly erected a wall where they hid for three days. The Germans soon abandoned the camp, and the remaining prisoners were able to join the partisans in the forest. The film, which took three years to complete, documents the escapees’ weeklong dig for the tunnel—an often tedious and frustrating job. But on the seventh and final day, the diggers switched directions, and the tunnel’s exit came into view. “My mother was overjoyed In 2012, Michael Kagan when my kids called her to say, and Dror Shwartz scouted ‘We found the tunnel,’” reports the former Novogrudok Betty Cohen of Jerusalem, who labor camp site, now an is writing a book on the fates agricultural college, ultimately of all 230 escapees, including winning permission to bring her 96-year-old mother Fania in escapees’ descendants to Brodsky. “Of all the tales of the dig for the tunnel—pictured Shoah, this is one that shows here—that their ancestors how resilient and resourceful used to flee. Credit: Courtesy the Jews were.” of Michael Kagan. Besides the escapees and The elder Kagan and the oth- their descendants, the film feaer escapees’ memories of round- tures the survivors’ non-Jewish ups, selections and mass shoot- neighbors, one of whom tearfulings provide the film’s viewers ly recalls the massacre of Jews.
Another local speaks proudly about the Jewish lives his family saved—the Nazis killed his great-grandfather for that heroism. David Silberklang, the senior historian for Yad Vashem’s Research Institute, lauds the film for spotlighting the story behind the story. “It’s important to know that they decided to take along the injured, like Jack Kagan after his amputation,” he says. “They said, ‘It’s going to be all of us or none of us.’ That’s a very Jewish response to the Holocaust.” In addition to the film, which is now being broadcast by i24news across the U.S., London’s Imperial War Museum houses a model of the labor camp and a tunnel for children to crawl through. The Kagan family’s sto-
Nazi roundup of Jews in Budapest, Hungary, October 1944. (Photo: Faupel/ German Federal Archives)
Some 250 Byelorussian Jews were in a Nazi labor camp in Novogrudok. Pictured here is one of the tunnels leading to escape that had been previously buried
Jack Kagan, who escaped the Nazi labor camp of Novogrudok. Credit: Courtesy of Michael Kagan.
ry is also among those featured in Berlin’s official Holocaust memorial. Last December, on the 75th anniversary of the massacre of 5,200 of his Novogrudok friends and family, Jack Kagan died at 87. His son says he is glad his father lived long enough to be featured in the film, a tribute “to both his tenacity and the tenacity of Jewish life.” The lesson is not lost on the next generation. “Seeing where it happened made it all the more real, and gave us all some closure,” says 26-year-old Itai Kagan, Jack’s grandson. “We grandchildren have more distance. To us, my grandfather’s story is more blessing than burden.” (JNS.ORG)
Rare Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts to be Shown During Passover at The Met Edited by: JV Staff
T
he signature foods of Passover will be celebrated in a display of four rare Hebrew manuscripts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning April 10. For three months, the Farissol Haggadah, Graziano Haggadah, and Gallico Siddur will be on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, while the Prato Haggadah will be shown at The Met Cloisters. Ranging in date from 1300 to 1515, these four illuminated books offer a glimpse of the Passover tables of medieval and Renaissance Jews in Spain and Italy. Each manu-
Ranging in date from 1300 to 1515, these four illuminated books offer a glimpse of the Passover tables of medieval and Renaissance Jews in Spain and Italy
script includes lively depictions of matzah (unleavened bread) and maror (bitter herbs), foods required for the Passover seder— the ritual meal that commemorates the exodus of the ancient Israelites from Egypt. The matzah references the unleavened bread the Israelites took with them as they left Egypt in haste, while the maror serves as a reminder of the bitter life of slavery that the Israelites had endured. All four manuscripts are loans from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York. The installation is part of a longstanding partnership between The Met and the JTS Library. The Haggadah is the book used at the seder. Although the essential components of the text were established in the second century, it was not until the Middle Ages that the Haggadah was first made into an independent, illustrated book for household use. Wine stains in the manu-
sol Haggadah, written in 1515 by the Bible commentator and geographer Abraham Mordecai Farissol in Ferrara, Italy, features two charming drawings in ink of men in Renaissance attire. One man holds the unleavened bread and the other an abundance of leafy greens. The Gallico Siddur (or prayer book) was made in 1487 in Florence, Italy. The seder-related illustrations depict a hand holding a round matzah and another holding the maror— in this case, a neat spray of herbs.
The Prato Haggadah (detail). Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment. Spanish, ca. 1300. Courtesy of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Andrew Winslow
scripts on view make clear that the books were at table as families celebrated the holiday.
in what is now Spain, celebrated the humble matzah by means of elaborate ornamentation in gold and expensive pigments of red, At The Met Fifth blue, and green. On the facing Avenue page, the red root and leafy top of The illustrator of the Graziano the maror suggest a radish. The Haggadah, made around 1300 manuscript known as the Faris-
At both Met locations, a special handout devoted to medieval traditions related to matzah and maror will be available free of charge during Passover and can be obtained at the information desks. It will include early 16th-century recipes for matzah.
Also of Interest, on the Website
Featured on the Museum's website in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History are two essays on Jewish art—"Jews and At The Met Cloisters the Arts in Medieval Europe" The Prato Haggadah will be and "Jewish Art in Late Antiquishown at The Met Cloisters in ty and Early Byzantium"—writthe Treasury (gallery 13), near ten by Barbara Drake Boehm, other European manuscripts of the Paul and Jill Ruddock Senior the same period intended for Curator for The Met Cloisters, personal use. It will be open to and Melanie Holcomb, Curaa drawing of yet another local tor, Department of Medieval interpretation of maror—in this Art and The Cloisters. Relevant case, an unidentified vegetable works in the Museum's collec(possibly an artichoke) of mon- tion are listed, along with sugumental proportions, offered by gestions for further reading and additional resources. two attendants.