October 21, 2025 • 30 mins
The Sounds of Film welcomes filmmaker Tim Roper, co-director of the powerful new documentary For the Living.
The film tells the extraordinary true story of Marcel Zielinski, a 10-year-old Holocaust survivor who, in January 1945, walked 60 miles by foot from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Krakow in search of his family. Decades later, hundreds of cyclists from around the world retraced his path in a moving event called Ride for the Living, an act of remembrance and empathy that continues to inspire participants each year.
For the Living draws profound parallels between Marcel’s journey and the modern world’s continuing struggle between dehumanization and compassion. Featuring moving interviews, historical footage, and stirring original music, the film explores how empathy can serve as humanity’s most powerful defense against hate and indifference.
The documentary screens at the Port Jefferson Documentary Series on October 23rd at 7 PM, with director Tim Roper and in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.
The Sounds of Film is America’s longest-running film, music, and ideas-themed radio show. For over 35 years, the program has entertained and inspired audiences throughout Long Island, Connecticut, and around the world online. Hosted by Tom Needham, the show has featured an extraordinary range of guests, including Rory Kennedy, D.A. Pennebaker, Dionne Warwick, Whit Stillman, Hal Hartley, Chuck D, Howard Shore, Carter Burwell, William H. Macy, and Wallace Shawn.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to the sounds of
film. Today we're speaking with
filmmaker Tim Roper, the Co director of the powerful new
documentary For The Living. The film is going to be
screening at the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series on
October 23rd at 7:00 PM. He will be participating in AQ
(00:24):
and A afterwards for the Living tells the story, though, of
Holocaust survivor Marcel Zielenski, who was a child,
walked 60 miles in search of hisfamily and of the hundreds of
cyclists who decades later retraced his journey in an act
of remembrance and empathy. Tim, thank you so much for
(00:45):
joining us on the program. Thank you, Tom.
Appreciate you having me. Yeah, this is a very powerful
film. Tell us a little bit about how
you came up with the idea for this film and why you made it.
Well the film was originated. The project was originated by my
Co director Mark Bennett who is now deceased.
(01:07):
Sadly he we lost Mark this summer to cancer and our
producer Lisa Efris. Together they started this
project as a way to document theevent called Ride for the Living
itself. It would have been a much
shorter film and it would have been a little more promotionally
focused. But after they went and scouted
(01:30):
the locations and spoke, did a few pre interviews, they came
back from Poland with this nagging feeling that there's
there's got to be more story to this than just the event itself.
The event is compelling and important and it raises
awareness, Holocaust education, awareness, but also awareness of
(01:52):
all the great work that the the Jewish Community Center in
Krakow is doing 60 miles from the biggest death camp on the
continent. So they consulted with me and
I've got a background in storytelling.
I have for quite a long time. And as they told me some of the
details, I began to realize, yes, there is much something
much bigger than the right eventitself.
(02:14):
There is this parallel between these two destinations,
Auschwitz, Birkenau, the death camp of the Auschwitz complex,
which is essentially the biggestgraveyard of Jewish people on
the European continent, and Krakow, which is just 60 miles
away, which is doing amazing work to revitalize their Jewish
community and helping refugees and survivors of the Russian
(02:39):
invasion of Ukraine. Over 300,000 refugees have been
assisted by this JCC since 2022,probably a higher number than
that by now. We started the film in 2019 with
the documenting the event itself, Ride for the Living 2019
and went from there to start to expanding it into this bigger
(03:03):
story of of the role of human nature in human history, which
is an aspect of history you don't hear quite often in in
historical films. We, we watch these episodes in
history and we get figures and facts and dates and leaders
names and death tolls. And we sort of think of them as
(03:25):
two adversaries that are automatically fall into the
bucket of victimizer or perpetrator and victim.
When in reality, all human beings are capable of some of
the horrible things you've heardabout in genocides and crimes
against humanity, whether it be as perpetrators or bystanders.
(03:47):
And we're all potential victims as well.
So we we go out from the we sortof zoom out from the Holocaust
itself to other incidents in thelast few centuries that have a
remarkable similarity to the events of that horrific,
horrific episode in human history.
And you do realize that there are patterns, There are human
(04:09):
nature patterns that take place through a propaganda and
conditioning of the public and lying and manipulation by
leaders the lead the population to believing that a certain
group of people are either dangerous or inferior or
subhuman simply based on who they are.
And the events unfold tragicallyafter that in very, very similar
(04:30):
ways, just different tools each time.
I really, I really love how you approached these larger themes
in the movie. Before we dive into it though,
can you tell us just a little bit more about this bicycle
event, because it sounds fascinating.
Yeah, What happens is every yearin June, it's an annual event
(04:50):
right now, has been since 2014 Ibelieve cyclists come from all
over the world. In the case of the 2019 event
that we documented, 250 people from around the world, different
countries, different nationalities, different
spiritualities, different ethnicities all come and take
part in a three day event for you. 2 are Auschwitz Birkenau
(05:14):
and Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz three as well.
There's three camps in that complex, and you learn a lot of
the details of the Holocaust that that most people don't
share. Both through interviews with
academic academics and the tour guides there.
You'd really learn what it was like to be an individual going
(05:36):
through that process, which is horrific.
So Marcel Zelinsky, who is the survivor you spoke of at the
intro, was 10 years old when he was when he was liberated by
Russian troops coming through Poland on their way to Germany
to try and defeat Hitler's army.He was set free along with a lot
(05:58):
of other children. They were the last people in
that camp, last survivors. And he had to walk 60 miles
across the Polish countryside through this war zone.
Awful, horrific amount of warfare taking place between
Russians and Germans at that point in time.
And this is a boy that still hadto start David on his his
uniform and and there was rampant anti-Semitism in the
(06:19):
area as well. And he had to try and find his
family. He was from Krakow.
He had lived in the Krakow ghetto as well prior to
Birkenau. And he didn't know the fate of
his mother or his father or his sibling.
And he had to walk across this countryside through this danger
to try and locate them in Krakow.
So it's a very trying time for him and a very, very inspiring
(06:43):
story when you think about the tenacity and the survival
instinct that he had to show. So these 250 riders, they, they
follow in the same path that he wrote, he walked in and in 1945
and Marcellus still alive, was still alive in 2014, still he is
today. He was 84 when we filmed and
takes part in the event, did every year since 2014.
(07:08):
And he's a he's a main interviewee of the film, very,
very sweet man, very, very loving, compassionate,
optimistic man, despite all his his his experiences.
Where does that optimism come from?
It's an interesting insight thatI found through many survivors
(07:30):
that I've interviewed. I've interviewed two or three
Holocaust survivors, a survivor of the genocide in Darfur, the
survivor of the genocide in Rwanda.
I've watched library videos fromthe show foundation of Cambodia
and Armenia and Bosnia. And you do realize that these
(07:50):
people have been through and seen things no one should ever
have to witness and no one should have their experience.
But they do understand both the the depths of evil, but also the
potential of of good and humanity.
And they are happy to be walkingthis earth at this point in
time. And they, they've really learned
(08:11):
that that love gets you a lot further than cruelty and evil
and, and, and the perpetration of crimes against others.
So I can't really, I can't really scientifically put a
point on why they have this attitude, but it is a remarkable
thing to behold you. Mentioned in the beginning that
(08:32):
this is not only a film about the Holocaust, but you get into
an analysis of many different genocides and and terrible
events that have happened in recent history.
Why did you feel like it was a good idea in this movie to
include those other events? Well, genocide and crimes
(08:53):
against humanity are a human phenomenon, and they're not.
They're more a feature than a bug, I'm sad to say.
And the Holocaust is one event among many.
It is one of the larger, more disturbingly shocking events,
but it does have a lot of a lot of common DNA with these other
(09:15):
incidences over the last severalcenturies and the patterns.
Human nature is, plays such a vital role in the development of
human history and you don't hearabout that very often in
historical films, but that is important to demonstrate for the
audience that we are all in thistogether.
We human beings are all in this together.
(09:37):
We all have that that unfortunate capacity to accept
the dogma and the propaganda that leads whoops, that leads
people to accept those kind of horrors in their in their
society and in their life. The the Holocaust is not an
(09:59):
isolated incident. That's the that's the most
important thing to remember. It's horrific in its own
mechanized, industrial way. And the death toll obviously is,
is one of the most horrific in human history.
But the mechanics that go about in the politics and the culture
(10:20):
and the society that lead up to events like this are remarkably
similar. The regard of fellow human
beings as something less than human or a perpetual criminal or
somehow a vermin or a rat or a cockroach or a pathogen, as
opposed to a walking, living, breathing, caring, loving human
(10:42):
being is, is a process that thatleader after leader have
mastered. And we're seeing it happening in
our society right now when it comes to Hispanic people in the
United States of America, somehow this notion that they're
all terrorists, are all murderers or rapists or drug
dealers or criminals of some kind, when in reality they
(11:02):
aren't. They're just human beings trying
to make their way through the world and trying to earn a
living. This dogma, you see it in the
news every day and it is very much part of historical human
pattern. It's unfortunate that more
people haven't seen a film like ours or other examples
throughout history to where these these horrible, horrible
(11:26):
manipulations and and and and propaganda can can lead.
It's it's a very, very tragic ending in every.
Case you go through many different examples, can you give
our listeners just one example of a a genocide that had similar
traits to what you saw in the Holocaust?
(11:49):
Yeah. That we make a point in the film
about what happened to indigenous people in North
America, not Columbus. This is after Columbus, but in
in 1565, the first landings by the Spanish and the French and
the peninsula that we now call Florida began a process of
(12:10):
coming ashore, claiming the land, digging for gold, and then
trying to either kill, convert or enslave anybody who got in
the way. And that happened to be there
were over 600 different tribes on the North American continent
alone and one by one they were pushed and shoved and victimized
and in many cases exterminated to make way for for a European
(12:35):
colonists. That doesn't make European
colonists inherently evil bad people.
It was just a time period in their history where if you had a
superior technology or a higher level of greed and domination,
to put it bluntly, you were ableto, you were able to level some
horrible, horrible consequences on the people that happen to be
(12:57):
in your way. And what happened is over this
period of centuries, from 1565 up into the mid 1900s, region
after region was was taken and they were pushed further and
further and further West. And when California was a an
outright genocide, the first governor of California called
(13:21):
for the extermination of native people to make way for people in
the gold rush. White people now calling
themselves American rushing across the border into what just
became California in 1849. And they made every excuse in
the world to start killing. These natives are using them as
slave labor in their minds. And about 80% of that native
(13:43):
population was exterminated. Now the the Nazis in the 1940s
looked at the reservation systemin the United States and took
amazing delights and and captivation and seeing how
organized and organized and condoned this reservation system
(14:04):
was. When in reality it was just a
way to isolate people into areasso you could take their land and
their their livestock and their food and their and their
livelihood away. The connective tissue between
what happened to indigenous people in North America and what
happened to Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s and 40s is
(14:27):
indelible. It's it's quite fascinating and
tragic all at the same time. It's not in the film, but I, I
remember seeing in another movieand, and reading about how
Hitler did study America and wasin, I guess inspired by the
eugenics movement. If, if that's the right word,
inspired, but he learned from itand the sterilization that was
(14:51):
going on of certain people in, in America that was supported.
And it's horrifying really, whenyou think about it, that it, it
did happen here and that he he learned something from studying
America. Well, the Nazi high command also
took great interest in the Jim Crow area in America as well.
The segregation and the the removal or denial of rights of
(15:17):
African American people in the 1800s and 1900s was of great
appeal to them as well. They sent dignitaries, if you
want to call them that, over to North America to study how the
southern states are actually able to get away with this kind
of stuff. And they I'm sure they adopted a
few ideas from that as well. It's amazing.
(15:40):
So one of the things that's fascinating about all of these
different events throughout history is that they're
obviously terrible, but it it's hard to believe that ordinary
people very often went along with the atrocities.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you've learned about
(16:00):
human nature and why sometimes regular people will just turn
the other way when when they're witnessing these sorts of
things? Yeah, it's quite an eye opener
actually, and a mind opener to to study the these patterns in
history. And you do realize that all of
us, every single one of us as human beings, are susceptible to
(16:23):
the temptation to dehumanize others if we're convinced or
someone convinces us that those people are somehow dangerous or
unclean or inferior or not even fully human or they don't have a
soul. And I'm putting that in quotes
because that's kind of some of the language that's been used in
the past. But the more you, you read this
(16:45):
common dogma, whether it was in Rwanda, where the, the Tutsis
were called cockroaches, or in, in, in Europe in the 1930s and
40s, Jewish people were considered rats and in Armenia
they were considered a pathogen.Christian Armenians were
considered a pathogen by the Muslim Turks on and on and on
and on these, you know, monkeys and and and dogs and all sorts
(17:09):
of imagery used to both demonizeand minimize the both the rights
and any potential empathy for these, for these groups that
somebody had the so-called brilliant idea of exterminating
are pushing into into into into a into a corner of society where
(17:32):
they didn't have rights anymore.Again, we're all susceptible to
this. That's the thing that we want to
need audiences to realize is that when you hear dogma and you
hear propaganda of this sort, even in even as a joke or even
as a as an off comment or trolling online somewhere.
You have to understand that thisis being done in order to harm a
(17:55):
group. Not an individual, but a group
of people. And trying to push them onto the
into the fringes of society withwhat Ben Friends called that
supreme perversion of thought, the idea that we are superior
and they are virtually inferior.Yeah, one of the things I like
about the film is that you do offer some hope and some
(18:17):
solutions. And a lot of that has to do with
education. And there's a mentioning of Anne
Frank and, and people like her throughout history, these
personal stories that can be used that sometimes have more
impact than just telling the history of the number of people
(18:39):
that died in this event or that event.
Why are personal stories so popular and so important?
But a coin of phrase, numbers make us numb.
I'm not trying to be cute with that turn of phrase, but it's
true. When you hear the when you hear
the number six million that refers to the number of Jews
that were massacred in the Holocaust, That's the human mind
(19:02):
can't comprehend that. We can't imagine that that swath
of humanity be that large, all dying.
And then we have no personal, nointimate connection to any of
those those within that 6,000,000 story.
Van Frank is about a real girl with a face and a diary and a
story and a point of view on theworld and a voice and a family
(19:26):
and a predicament that she was in.
And, and when you when you hear a story like that about an
individual that represents the larger group, it's much easier
to grasp. It's much easier to care.
And that's one of the things we we discovered about the teaching
of history is not only can we not allow it to be whitewashed
as it's as people are attemptingto do now, but we need to focus
(19:49):
on the individuals that represent the group and the
larger group, whether it's indigenous peoples or African
people or Bosnian people or Cambodian people or Jewish
people in the Holocaust or Darfuris or Ukrainians, any of
these people we need to understand.
Students need to look at incidents in history and say
(20:12):
that could have been me. I may look different, I may
speak different, I may have different skin color, I may be
different nationality, I may have different religious
beliefs, but I could be in that position under the right or
wrong circumstances. And that makes people not only
learn, but care and be compelled.
In the play The Diary of Anne Frank, and Frank surprisingly
(20:36):
says near the end that despite everything, she believes that
people are basically good at heart.
After studying all these examples of genocide, do you
believe that people are basically good?
I believe they are born with goodness in their hearts.
Yes, I think we all are a nice fresh clean slate when we're
born where you have innate thingcalled empathy for other human
(21:00):
beings. Even babies demonstrate this to
one another. We have a a mention of that in
our film. They we are.
We do not like to see others of our kind suffer when we hear
someone in pain or in distress that causes certain things in
our body to happen where we we try to make it stop.
(21:22):
Now that's that's as a fresh, clean slate.
Slowly, children began to be impacted by not only maybe some
misdirection from their parents,but society, culture, some
things in the educational systemthat began to arouse a
competitive nature to the degreethat things like fear,
(21:43):
resentment, rage, disgust start to whittle away at this human
nature component we have called empathy.
Now there is a very small, thin slice of humans born with
different chemical combinations in the brain that don't possess
empathy, but it's extremely rare.
(22:03):
Most of the time it's there and it's whittled away by things in
society. So one of the solutions we we
point to in the film is that in early childhood education, which
is starved in America, frankly, it's getting worse every day.
Social emotional learning is an important component to integrate
throughout the subjects so that people, so children can look at
(22:28):
other children of different features and different
nationalities and languages and understand that they're just as
human as I am and they have the same feelings.
I have pain, fear, happiness, glory, Glee.
They have all of that embedded with inside them as well.
(22:50):
And when I, when I, when I hurt them, I'm really hurting myself.
I'm hurting my species. We've really got to fortify
that. That's one of our one of our
initiatives in the film. Is it, how can we inoculate the
next generation or succeeding generations from being
susceptible to things like dehumanizing propaganda and
attitudes and actions? How can we fortify the empathy
(23:14):
that we know they already have so they don't fall victim or
fall into the propaganda propaganda trap regarding others
as less than? If I can ask you one point of
clarification, I agree. Obviously genocide is horrible
and empathy is a good thing. I was a teacher and one of the
(23:38):
things that I noticed in in recent years is that there has
been a real push away in certainacademic areas away from
competitiveness. Examples would include things
like they're they're getting ridof the Regents exams gradually
in New York. Colleges are not looking at SA
(23:59):
TS as much any longer. A lot of high schools now no
longer have class rank. They're doing away with gifted
and talented programs in in the film, it was suggested, but I'm
not sure that this is your point.
So I want to hear your view on it, that maybe when schools
(24:20):
promote competitiveness the way they used to in the past with
merit grading systems, that thatsomehow over the long run, when
people leave that system and then go out into society, it
contributes to a world where genocides occur.
Is is that accurate? No, that's not exactly the the
(24:44):
point we were making. We're we're just focusing mostly
on early childhood education. OK, I can't get, you know, I
can't get into like scoring and Sats and all that.
What we believe is that things like classroom behavior charts
with the stars and the demerits that you put on the wall, and so
and so has all these stars and such and such has none.
(25:08):
And then another person has demerits that that's a demeaning
thing to do. And this doesn't really lead to
anything positive, frankly. Pride.
Pride is fine. Everyone should feel pride when
they do something worthy of thatpride.
But to turn it into a sort of a a, for lack of a better word, a
(25:30):
compound of jealousy and resentment and social Darwinism,
I don't think helps anyone. But yeah, and and yet.
Doesn't it seem like it in society now, you know, there
seems to be this battle that's going on between people that
there feel that there should be more merit versus those who feel
(25:54):
that there should be more empathy.
I I don't know why those two things have to be so separate,
but there does to be seem to be this battle that's going on at a
very high level. Yeah, I don't want to get into
the whole, you know, philosophical battle about
participation trophies and all of that stuff that that trying
(26:15):
to like guard a child's self esteem and bubble wrap.
It is not our intent by any means.
It's just to recognize the common humanity among young
human beings because again, the way we use language online, one
of the most common insults is POS.
(26:37):
You know, online and social media.
That's, that may sound relatively harmless, but when
you come down to it, it is a wayof characterizing another human
being as not human as is worse than an inanimate object, almost
like something worthy of, of a sewer.
(26:58):
And that you just can't. That doesn't do anyone any good.
You can look, we all have human emotions.
We all have resentment and hate and fear and rage and and
happiness and love and pride. We have all of those things.
But it's what you do with those things that defines what kind of
human being you are, defines it defines how you're going to get
along in the world and what kindof impact you're going to have
(27:21):
on your fellow humans. And that's what we're trying to.
That's what we're trying to, forlack of a better word, inoculate
against is this notion that you are superior and someone is less
than because they are a member of a certain group.
The minute people start adoptinglanguage like those people,
quote UN quote, you're categorizing a group of human
(27:42):
beings into a sort of a purgatory that they had nothing
to do with. We need to avoid that because
that comes to a bad end every single time.
Yeah. Do you think capitalism and
empathy can coexist? Absolutely, yes.
But that's why, I mean, you had this epic battle in politics.
(28:03):
And this is not part of the film, by the way.
This is. Yeah.
No, I know. Review is that, you know,
there's a school of thinking capitalism should be unbounded
by any kind of regulation. No guardrails, no norms, no
laws, no fair play, none of thatstuff.
It's like only the strong survive.
(28:23):
Darwinism as a theory is one thing.
The social Darwinism is is a fairly destructive way to think
because power becomes everythingmight becomes right.
And if you're not powerful and you're not born with with all
these privileges, then you automatically are somehow
regarded as inferior. That's that's not good for
(28:45):
anybody because we all have our our weaknesses and our strengths
and we need the opportunity to exploit those.
Yeah, well, Tim, you do an excellent job showing what
happens in history when this is not really something that people
look out for. The end result can be
disastrous. This film is is really powerful.
(29:08):
Gives us a lot to think about. And it's going to be playing
here on Long Island at the Port Jefferson Documentary Film
Series on October 23rd at 7:00 PM.
There's going to be AQ and a afterwards with Tim.
And can you tell us where onlinepeople can learn more about this
film? Yeah, we have a website for the
(29:28):
film. It's 4V living. movie.com
explains Sort of the intent of the film, inspiration behind it,
some of the players in the film,the remarkable, really stellar
line up of academics that we have interviewed.
And the other thing to remember about the film too is it deals
in the Holocaust, but it is not quote UN quote, A Holocaust
(29:51):
film. You don't need to be a Jewish
person in order to go see this film.
This film is about human nature and human history.
It's about every single one of us.
And it's also not only about history.
It's about the moment we're living through right now.
You'll see many of the the phenomenon that we talked about
in the film in the news every single day now.
(30:11):
It, it's a, it's a, it's a focuson common humanity and what can
we do to get that back? Well, Tim, thank you so much for
coming on the program and I wantto highly recommend that
everyone go out and see this film.
Come on out, I'd love to talk toeach and everyone of you.
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to the sounds of
film. Today we're speaking with
filmmaker Tim Roper, the Co director of the powerful new
documentary For The Living. The film is going to be
screening at the Port Jefferson Documentary Film Series on
October 23rd at 7:00 PM. He will be participating in AQ
(00:24):
and A afterwards for the Living tells the story, though, of
Holocaust survivor Marcel Zielenski, who was a child,
walked 60 miles in search of hisfamily and of the hundreds of
cyclists who decades later retraced his journey in an act
of remembrance and empathy. Tim, thank you so much for
(00:45):
joining us on the program. Thank you, Tom.
Appreciate you having me. Yeah, this is a very powerful
film. Tell us a little bit about how
you came up with the idea for this film and why you made it.
Well the film was originated. The project was originated by my
Co director Mark Bennett who is now deceased.
(01:07):
Sadly he we lost Mark this summer to cancer and our
producer Lisa Efris. Together they started this
project as a way to document theevent called Ride for the Living
itself. It would have been a much
shorter film and it would have been a little more promotionally
focused. But after they went and scouted
(01:30):
the locations and spoke, did a few pre interviews, they came
back from Poland with this nagging feeling that there's
there's got to be more story to this than just the event itself.
The event is compelling and important and it raises
awareness, Holocaust education, awareness, but also awareness of
(01:52):
all the great work that the the Jewish Community Center in
Krakow is doing 60 miles from the biggest death camp on the
continent. So they consulted with me and
I've got a background in storytelling.
I have for quite a long time. And as they told me some of the
details, I began to realize, yes, there is much something
much bigger than the right eventitself.
(02:14):
There is this parallel between these two destinations,
Auschwitz, Birkenau, the death camp of the Auschwitz complex,
which is essentially the biggestgraveyard of Jewish people on
the European continent, and Krakow, which is just 60 miles
away, which is doing amazing work to revitalize their Jewish
community and helping refugees and survivors of the Russian
(02:39):
invasion of Ukraine. Over 300,000 refugees have been
assisted by this JCC since 2022,probably a higher number than
that by now. We started the film in 2019 with
the documenting the event itself, Ride for the Living 2019
and went from there to start to expanding it into this bigger
(03:03):
story of of the role of human nature in human history, which
is an aspect of history you don't hear quite often in in
historical films. We, we watch these episodes in
history and we get figures and facts and dates and leaders
names and death tolls. And we sort of think of them as
(03:25):
two adversaries that are automatically fall into the
bucket of victimizer or perpetrator and victim.
When in reality, all human beings are capable of some of
the horrible things you've heardabout in genocides and crimes
against humanity, whether it be as perpetrators or bystanders.
(03:47):
And we're all potential victims as well.
So we we go out from the we sortof zoom out from the Holocaust
itself to other incidents in thelast few centuries that have a
remarkable similarity to the events of that horrific,
horrific episode in human history.
And you do realize that there are patterns, There are human
(04:09):
nature patterns that take place through a propaganda and
conditioning of the public and lying and manipulation by
leaders the lead the population to believing that a certain
group of people are either dangerous or inferior or
subhuman simply based on who they are.
And the events unfold tragicallyafter that in very, very similar
(04:30):
ways, just different tools each time.
I really, I really love how you approached these larger themes
in the movie. Before we dive into it though,
can you tell us just a little bit more about this bicycle
event, because it sounds fascinating.
Yeah, What happens is every yearin June, it's an annual event
(04:50):
right now, has been since 2014 Ibelieve cyclists come from all
over the world. In the case of the 2019 event
that we documented, 250 people from around the world, different
countries, different nationalities, different
spiritualities, different ethnicities all come and take
part in a three day event for you. 2 are Auschwitz Birkenau
(05:14):
and Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz three as well.
There's three camps in that complex, and you learn a lot of
the details of the Holocaust that that most people don't
share. Both through interviews with
academic academics and the tour guides there.
You'd really learn what it was like to be an individual going
(05:36):
through that process, which is horrific.
So Marcel Zelinsky, who is the survivor you spoke of at the
intro, was 10 years old when he was when he was liberated by
Russian troops coming through Poland on their way to Germany
to try and defeat Hitler's army.He was set free along with a lot
(05:58):
of other children. They were the last people in
that camp, last survivors. And he had to walk 60 miles
across the Polish countryside through this war zone.
Awful, horrific amount of warfare taking place between
Russians and Germans at that point in time.
And this is a boy that still hadto start David on his his
uniform and and there was rampant anti-Semitism in the
(06:19):
area as well. And he had to try and find his
family. He was from Krakow.
He had lived in the Krakow ghetto as well prior to
Birkenau. And he didn't know the fate of
his mother or his father or his sibling.
And he had to walk across this countryside through this danger
to try and locate them in Krakow.
So it's a very trying time for him and a very, very inspiring
(06:43):
story when you think about the tenacity and the survival
instinct that he had to show. So these 250 riders, they, they
follow in the same path that he wrote, he walked in and in 1945
and Marcellus still alive, was still alive in 2014, still he is
today. He was 84 when we filmed and
takes part in the event, did every year since 2014.
(07:08):
And he's a he's a main interviewee of the film, very,
very sweet man, very, very loving, compassionate,
optimistic man, despite all his his his experiences.
Where does that optimism come from?
It's an interesting insight thatI found through many survivors
(07:30):
that I've interviewed. I've interviewed two or three
Holocaust survivors, a survivor of the genocide in Darfur, the
survivor of the genocide in Rwanda.
I've watched library videos fromthe show foundation of Cambodia
and Armenia and Bosnia. And you do realize that these
(07:50):
people have been through and seen things no one should ever
have to witness and no one should have their experience.
But they do understand both the the depths of evil, but also the
potential of of good and humanity.
And they are happy to be walkingthis earth at this point in
time. And they, they've really learned
(08:11):
that that love gets you a lot further than cruelty and evil
and, and, and the perpetration of crimes against others.
So I can't really, I can't really scientifically put a
point on why they have this attitude, but it is a remarkable
thing to behold you. Mentioned in the beginning that
(08:32):
this is not only a film about the Holocaust, but you get into
an analysis of many different genocides and and terrible
events that have happened in recent history.
Why did you feel like it was a good idea in this movie to
include those other events? Well, genocide and crimes
(08:53):
against humanity are a human phenomenon, and they're not.
They're more a feature than a bug, I'm sad to say.
And the Holocaust is one event among many.
It is one of the larger, more disturbingly shocking events,
but it does have a lot of a lot of common DNA with these other
(09:15):
incidences over the last severalcenturies and the patterns.
Human nature is, plays such a vital role in the development of
human history and you don't hearabout that very often in
historical films, but that is important to demonstrate for the
audience that we are all in thistogether.
We human beings are all in this together.
(09:37):
We all have that that unfortunate capacity to accept
the dogma and the propaganda that leads whoops, that leads
people to accept those kind of horrors in their in their
society and in their life. The the Holocaust is not an
(09:59):
isolated incident. That's the that's the most
important thing to remember. It's horrific in its own
mechanized, industrial way. And the death toll obviously is,
is one of the most horrific in human history.
But the mechanics that go about in the politics and the culture
(10:20):
and the society that lead up to events like this are remarkably
similar. The regard of fellow human
beings as something less than human or a perpetual criminal or
somehow a vermin or a rat or a cockroach or a pathogen, as
opposed to a walking, living, breathing, caring, loving human
(10:42):
being is, is a process that thatleader after leader have
mastered. And we're seeing it happening in
our society right now when it comes to Hispanic people in the
United States of America, somehow this notion that they're
all terrorists, are all murderers or rapists or drug
dealers or criminals of some kind, when in reality they
(11:02):
aren't. They're just human beings trying
to make their way through the world and trying to earn a
living. This dogma, you see it in the
news every day and it is very much part of historical human
pattern. It's unfortunate that more
people haven't seen a film like ours or other examples
throughout history to where these these horrible, horrible
(11:26):
manipulations and and and and propaganda can can lead.
It's it's a very, very tragic ending in every.
Case you go through many different examples, can you give
our listeners just one example of a a genocide that had similar
traits to what you saw in the Holocaust?
(11:49):
Yeah. That we make a point in the film
about what happened to indigenous people in North
America, not Columbus. This is after Columbus, but in
in 1565, the first landings by the Spanish and the French and
the peninsula that we now call Florida began a process of
(12:10):
coming ashore, claiming the land, digging for gold, and then
trying to either kill, convert or enslave anybody who got in
the way. And that happened to be there
were over 600 different tribes on the North American continent
alone and one by one they were pushed and shoved and victimized
and in many cases exterminated to make way for for a European
(12:35):
colonists. That doesn't make European
colonists inherently evil bad people.
It was just a time period in their history where if you had a
superior technology or a higher level of greed and domination,
to put it bluntly, you were ableto, you were able to level some
horrible, horrible consequences on the people that happen to be
(12:57):
in your way. And what happened is over this
period of centuries, from 1565 up into the mid 1900s, region
after region was was taken and they were pushed further and
further and further West. And when California was a an
outright genocide, the first governor of California called
(13:21):
for the extermination of native people to make way for people in
the gold rush. White people now calling
themselves American rushing across the border into what just
became California in 1849. And they made every excuse in
the world to start killing. These natives are using them as
slave labor in their minds. And about 80% of that native
(13:43):
population was exterminated. Now the the Nazis in the 1940s
looked at the reservation systemin the United States and took
amazing delights and and captivation and seeing how
organized and organized and condoned this reservation system
(14:04):
was. When in reality it was just a
way to isolate people into areasso you could take their land and
their their livestock and their food and their and their
livelihood away. The connective tissue between
what happened to indigenous people in North America and what
happened to Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s and 40s is
(14:27):
indelible. It's it's quite fascinating and
tragic all at the same time. It's not in the film, but I, I
remember seeing in another movieand, and reading about how
Hitler did study America and wasin, I guess inspired by the
eugenics movement. If, if that's the right word,
inspired, but he learned from itand the sterilization that was
(14:51):
going on of certain people in, in America that was supported.
And it's horrifying really, whenyou think about it, that it, it
did happen here and that he he learned something from studying
America. Well, the Nazi high command also
took great interest in the Jim Crow area in America as well.
The segregation and the the removal or denial of rights of
(15:17):
African American people in the 1800s and 1900s was of great
appeal to them as well. They sent dignitaries, if you
want to call them that, over to North America to study how the
southern states are actually able to get away with this kind
of stuff. And they I'm sure they adopted a
few ideas from that as well. It's amazing.
(15:40):
So one of the things that's fascinating about all of these
different events throughout history is that they're
obviously terrible, but it it's hard to believe that ordinary
people very often went along with the atrocities.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you've learned about
(16:00):
human nature and why sometimes regular people will just turn
the other way when when they're witnessing these sorts of
things? Yeah, it's quite an eye opener
actually, and a mind opener to to study the these patterns in
history. And you do realize that all of
us, every single one of us as human beings, are susceptible to
(16:23):
the temptation to dehumanize others if we're convinced or
someone convinces us that those people are somehow dangerous or
unclean or inferior or not even fully human or they don't have a
soul. And I'm putting that in quotes
because that's kind of some of the language that's been used in
the past. But the more you, you read this
(16:45):
common dogma, whether it was in Rwanda, where the, the Tutsis
were called cockroaches, or in, in, in Europe in the 1930s and
40s, Jewish people were considered rats and in Armenia
they were considered a pathogen.Christian Armenians were
considered a pathogen by the Muslim Turks on and on and on
and on these, you know, monkeys and and and dogs and all sorts
(17:09):
of imagery used to both demonizeand minimize the both the rights
and any potential empathy for these, for these groups that
somebody had the so-called brilliant idea of exterminating
are pushing into into into into a into a corner of society where
(17:32):
they didn't have rights anymore.Again, we're all susceptible to
this. That's the thing that we want to
need audiences to realize is that when you hear dogma and you
hear propaganda of this sort, even in even as a joke or even
as a as an off comment or trolling online somewhere.
You have to understand that thisis being done in order to harm a
(17:55):
group. Not an individual, but a group
of people. And trying to push them onto the
into the fringes of society withwhat Ben Friends called that
supreme perversion of thought, the idea that we are superior
and they are virtually inferior.Yeah, one of the things I like
about the film is that you do offer some hope and some
(18:17):
solutions. And a lot of that has to do with
education. And there's a mentioning of Anne
Frank and, and people like her throughout history, these
personal stories that can be used that sometimes have more
impact than just telling the history of the number of people
(18:39):
that died in this event or that event.
Why are personal stories so popular and so important?
But a coin of phrase, numbers make us numb.
I'm not trying to be cute with that turn of phrase, but it's
true. When you hear the when you hear
the number six million that refers to the number of Jews
that were massacred in the Holocaust, That's the human mind
(19:02):
can't comprehend that. We can't imagine that that swath
of humanity be that large, all dying.
And then we have no personal, nointimate connection to any of
those those within that 6,000,000 story.
Van Frank is about a real girl with a face and a diary and a
story and a point of view on theworld and a voice and a family
(19:26):
and a predicament that she was in.
And, and when you when you hear a story like that about an
individual that represents the larger group, it's much easier
to grasp. It's much easier to care.
And that's one of the things we we discovered about the teaching
of history is not only can we not allow it to be whitewashed
as it's as people are attemptingto do now, but we need to focus
(19:49):
on the individuals that represent the group and the
larger group, whether it's indigenous peoples or African
people or Bosnian people or Cambodian people or Jewish
people in the Holocaust or Darfuris or Ukrainians, any of
these people we need to understand.
Students need to look at incidents in history and say
(20:12):
that could have been me. I may look different, I may
speak different, I may have different skin color, I may be
different nationality, I may have different religious
beliefs, but I could be in that position under the right or
wrong circumstances. And that makes people not only
learn, but care and be compelled.
In the play The Diary of Anne Frank, and Frank surprisingly
(20:36):
says near the end that despite everything, she believes that
people are basically good at heart.
After studying all these examples of genocide, do you
believe that people are basically good?
I believe they are born with goodness in their hearts.
Yes, I think we all are a nice fresh clean slate when we're
born where you have innate thingcalled empathy for other human
(21:00):
beings. Even babies demonstrate this to
one another. We have a a mention of that in
our film. They we are.
We do not like to see others of our kind suffer when we hear
someone in pain or in distress that causes certain things in
our body to happen where we we try to make it stop.
(21:22):
Now that's that's as a fresh, clean slate.
Slowly, children began to be impacted by not only maybe some
misdirection from their parents,but society, culture, some
things in the educational systemthat began to arouse a
competitive nature to the degreethat things like fear,
(21:43):
resentment, rage, disgust start to whittle away at this human
nature component we have called empathy.
Now there is a very small, thin slice of humans born with
different chemical combinations in the brain that don't possess
empathy, but it's extremely rare.
(22:03):
Most of the time it's there and it's whittled away by things in
society. So one of the solutions we we
point to in the film is that in early childhood education, which
is starved in America, frankly, it's getting worse every day.
Social emotional learning is an important component to integrate
throughout the subjects so that people, so children can look at
(22:28):
other children of different features and different
nationalities and languages and understand that they're just as
human as I am and they have the same feelings.
I have pain, fear, happiness, glory, Glee.
They have all of that embedded with inside them as well.
(22:50):
And when I, when I, when I hurt them, I'm really hurting myself.
I'm hurting my species. We've really got to fortify
that. That's one of our one of our
initiatives in the film. Is it, how can we inoculate the
next generation or succeeding generations from being
susceptible to things like dehumanizing propaganda and
attitudes and actions? How can we fortify the empathy
(23:14):
that we know they already have so they don't fall victim or
fall into the propaganda propaganda trap regarding others
as less than? If I can ask you one point of
clarification, I agree. Obviously genocide is horrible
and empathy is a good thing. I was a teacher and one of the
(23:38):
things that I noticed in in recent years is that there has
been a real push away in certainacademic areas away from
competitiveness. Examples would include things
like they're they're getting ridof the Regents exams gradually
in New York. Colleges are not looking at SA
(23:59):
TS as much any longer. A lot of high schools now no
longer have class rank. They're doing away with gifted
and talented programs in in the film, it was suggested, but I'm
not sure that this is your point.
So I want to hear your view on it, that maybe when schools
(24:20):
promote competitiveness the way they used to in the past with
merit grading systems, that thatsomehow over the long run, when
people leave that system and then go out into society, it
contributes to a world where genocides occur.
Is is that accurate? No, that's not exactly the the
(24:44):
point we were making. We're we're just focusing mostly
on early childhood education. OK, I can't get, you know, I
can't get into like scoring and Sats and all that.
What we believe is that things like classroom behavior charts
with the stars and the demerits that you put on the wall, and so
and so has all these stars and such and such has none.
(25:08):
And then another person has demerits that that's a demeaning
thing to do. And this doesn't really lead to
anything positive, frankly. Pride.
Pride is fine. Everyone should feel pride when
they do something worthy of thatpride.
But to turn it into a sort of a a, for lack of a better word, a
(25:30):
compound of jealousy and resentment and social Darwinism,
I don't think helps anyone. But yeah, and and yet.
Doesn't it seem like it in society now, you know, there
seems to be this battle that's going on between people that
there feel that there should be more merit versus those who feel
(25:54):
that there should be more empathy.
I I don't know why those two things have to be so separate,
but there does to be seem to be this battle that's going on at a
very high level. Yeah, I don't want to get into
the whole, you know, philosophical battle about
participation trophies and all of that stuff that that trying
(26:15):
to like guard a child's self esteem and bubble wrap.
It is not our intent by any means.
It's just to recognize the common humanity among young
human beings because again, the way we use language online, one
of the most common insults is POS.
(26:37):
You know, online and social media.
That's, that may sound relatively harmless, but when
you come down to it, it is a wayof characterizing another human
being as not human as is worse than an inanimate object, almost
like something worthy of, of a sewer.
(26:58):
And that you just can't. That doesn't do anyone any good.
You can look, we all have human emotions.
We all have resentment and hate and fear and rage and and
happiness and love and pride. We have all of those things.
But it's what you do with those things that defines what kind of
human being you are, defines it defines how you're going to get
along in the world and what kindof impact you're going to have
(27:21):
on your fellow humans. And that's what we're trying to.
That's what we're trying to, forlack of a better word, inoculate
against is this notion that you are superior and someone is less
than because they are a member of a certain group.
The minute people start adoptinglanguage like those people,
quote UN quote, you're categorizing a group of human
(27:42):
beings into a sort of a purgatory that they had nothing
to do with. We need to avoid that because
that comes to a bad end every single time.
Yeah. Do you think capitalism and
empathy can coexist? Absolutely, yes.
But that's why, I mean, you had this epic battle in politics.
(28:03):
And this is not part of the film, by the way.
This is. Yeah.
No, I know. Review is that, you know,
there's a school of thinking capitalism should be unbounded
by any kind of regulation. No guardrails, no norms, no
laws, no fair play, none of thatstuff.
It's like only the strong survive.
(28:23):
Darwinism as a theory is one thing.
The social Darwinism is is a fairly destructive way to think
because power becomes everythingmight becomes right.
And if you're not powerful and you're not born with with all
these privileges, then you automatically are somehow
regarded as inferior. That's that's not good for
(28:45):
anybody because we all have our our weaknesses and our strengths
and we need the opportunity to exploit those.
Yeah, well, Tim, you do an excellent job showing what
happens in history when this is not really something that people
look out for. The end result can be
disastrous. This film is is really powerful.
(29:08):
Gives us a lot to think about. And it's going to be playing
here on Long Island at the Port Jefferson Documentary Film
Series on October 23rd at 7:00 PM.
There's going to be AQ and a afterwards with Tim.
And can you tell us where onlinepeople can learn more about this
film? Yeah, we have a website for the
(29:28):
film. It's 4V living. movie.com
explains Sort of the intent of the film, inspiration behind it,
some of the players in the film,the remarkable, really stellar
line up of academics that we have interviewed.
And the other thing to remember about the film too is it deals
in the Holocaust, but it is not quote UN quote, A Holocaust
(29:51):
film. You don't need to be a Jewish
person in order to go see this film.
This film is about human nature and human history.
It's about every single one of us.
And it's also not only about history.
It's about the moment we're living through right now.
You'll see many of the the phenomenon that we talked about
in the film in the news every single day now.
(30:11):
It, it's a, it's a, it's a focuson common humanity and what can
we do to get that back? Well, Tim, thank you so much for
coming on the program and I wantto highly recommend that
everyone go out and see this film.
Come on out, I'd love to talk toeach and everyone of you.
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