HMTC and the David Taub Reel Upstander Film Series presented a screening of The Codebreaker in honor of women’s history month. The film reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government sent infamous gangsters to prison in the 1930s and brought down a massive, near-invisible Nazi spy ring in WWII. Commentary was provided by Melissa Davis, the Library and Archives Director at the George C. Marshall Foundation, which holds the papers of Elizebeth Smith Friedman.

If you missed this program, you can watch it now on Youtube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

HMTC, in conjunction with the David Taub Reel Upstander Film Series, is presented a screening of an episode of The American Experience which explores American antisemitism during the Holocaust, the apathy of the U.S. State Department, and the deliberate suppression of information that European Jews were slated for genocide. We were joined by Chris Boian from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) who provided a commentary and answer questions about refugee issues around the world today.

If you missed this program, you can watch it now on Youtube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

HMTC marked the opening of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo with a film screening and discussion of a documentary about the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin. Featuring never-before-seen archival footage and research, "The Nazi Games" reveals how the Olympic Games were shaped by the collaboration of interests between Hitler and the ambitious members of the International Olympic Committee who turned the 1936 Games into the biggest Olympic Games the world had ever seen. Commentary was provided by David Klevan, Education Outreach Specialists at the William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

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HMTC hosted a program about the documentary film “Saul & Ruby’s Holocaust Survivor Band” with Holocaust Survivor Saul Dreier and the documentary filmmaker Tod Lending. We met with the dynamic man behind the band who is at the core of this heartwarming story. Note, film clips, not the entire film, will be shown as part of this program. To watch the film in its entirety check Amazon.

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HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

In the wake of the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May of 1940, the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) joined the Jewish Cultural Quarter’s National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam for a virtual showing of a documentary about a hidden child Survivor, Leo Ullman. Following the film screening, Mr. Ullman moderated a virtual discussion with the descendants of some of the families that helped save him and his family in Holland during the Holocaust.

If you missed this program you can watch it now on Youtube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County presented on April 22, 2021, in conjunction with the David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series, a virtual screening of the documentary “Bullied,” which tells the story of Jamie Nabozny, a gay student who endured relentless bullying in both middle and high school despite seeking help from school administrators. The film also shows how Jamie’s legal battle helped him secure justice and underscores how important it is to confront anti-gay bullying. The powerful film offers an inspiring message of hope to those fighting harassment today. An introduction and post-screening Q&A was hosted by Stephen Mast, LMSW, a clinical social worker who has been serving the Long Island community for more than three decades.

If you missed this program you can watch it now on YouTube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

The Catskills on the Big and Small Screen

The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) presented three virtual programs about the portrayal in TV and film of the Catskills, when it was perhaps the most well-known playground and summer retreat for Yiddish speaking and other Jewish residents from the New York City area. A discussion was led by HMTC’s scholar-in-residence, Dr. Linda Burghardt, who talked about the historical accuracy of the films and answered questions from the audience about the Catskills and its’ image in popular memory.

The topic of March 21st’s discussion was Dirty Dancing, perhaps the most well-known film portrayal of the Catskills. This Academy Award and Golden Globe winning film follows the Houseman Family during their summer in the Catskills, when Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) falls in love with the camp’s dance instructor, Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), a totally unsuitable match in her father’s eyes.

If you missed this program you can watch it now on Youtube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

On March 17, 2021, the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) participated in a virtual premier of Still Life in Lodz, a documentary film about what happened to the Jewish residents of this Polish city in the period before, during and after WWII. HMTC held a post-screening discussion with the film’s director, Slawomir Grünberg, one of the film’s writers, Lilka Elbaum, and one of the family members who traces his history in the film, Paul Celler.

If you missed the discussion you can watch it now on youtube:

Slawomir Grünberg is an award-winning director, producer and cinematographer of documentary films. As a graduate of the Directing Department of the Lodz Film School, he emigrated to the USA in 1981 and has since directed and produced over 45 documentaries concerning social, environmental and disability issues. Winner of numerous international awards, including an Emmy Award for “School Prayer: A Community at War,” he has also won a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts and Soros Justice Media Fellowship.

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

In the spring of 1945, the Swedish Red Cross sent a fleet of white buses to rescue what would become over 30,000 concentration camp inmates. On February 9, 2021, the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC), through the David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series, screened “Stateless, Arrogant and Lunatic,” an award-winning drama-documentary (100 minutes) created by Lena Einhorn about Gilel Storch and the white bus operation. A virtual discussion followed with Marcus Storch, whose father pushed the Red Cross to act, and the filmmaker, Lena Einhorn. The discussion was moderated by Gilel Storch’s grand-nephew, the famed concert producer Tomer Adaddi. You can watch the film on your own and then watch the post-film discussion on youtube:

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

On January 14, 2021, HMTC and the NAACP marked Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend with a virtual screening and discussion of Defining Moments: The Civil Rights Movement in North Hempstead, part of HMTC’s David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series. The film documents more than a dozen oral histories of North Hempstead residents who had a role in the Civil Rights Movement. A post -screening discussion, connected the history to contemporary concerns, will include the filmmaker Alan Ginsberg, Civil Rights activist Bernice Sims, and the Program Director for Nassau County’s Office of Minority Affairs, Dexter Hedgepeth. Watch the film on your own and then view the discussion that took place:

Join the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC), in conjunction with the David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series, for a post-screening discussion of Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War (available on Amazon Prime). Please watch the film on your own to learn about a Unitarian minister and his wife who left their home in Massachusetts in 1939 to help rescue Jewish refugees from Europe. Then join HMTC for a virtual discussion with David Angeles, Senior Partnership Officer for Crisis Response at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, the current organization that traces its roots back to the Unitarian group that sent the Sharps to Europe and that works today to advance human rights and social justice around the world.

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

In honor of Election Day, HMTC’s David Taub Reel Upstander Film Series presents a virtual film screening and discussion on Zoom, of the documentary, Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot. The screening will be followed by a post-screening discussion with the former president of the Freeport-Roosevelt NAACP and Alabama native, Claudia Swansey.

Produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot, is the true story of the forgotten heroes in the fight for voting rights - the courageous students and teachers of Selma, Alabama, who stood up against injustice despite facing intimidation, arrests and violence. By organizing and marching bravely, these change-makers achieved one of the most significant victories of the civil rights era.

This 40-minute film, narrated by Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer, is a reminder that each of us has the ability to bring about social change and seeks to inspire young people and communities to exercise their right to participate in our democracy.

The film will introduce Claudia Swansey, who will also lead a post-screening discussion. Ms. Swansey was raised in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement and followed her family to Long Island in the late 1960’s. She later moved to Chicago, where she became politically active, working for Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign and Carol Mosley Braun’s Senate campaign. She returned to Long Island in the 1990s, where she got involved with the Freeport-Roosevelt NAACP Branch, along with a number of other organizations, eventually rising to become President of the branch from 2009-2011. She brings extensive experience in voter registration drives, both on Long Island and across the country, and a personal connection to the events in Selma.

The program is co-sponsored with the NAACP Freeport-Roosevelt Branch #2147, Education Committee.

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

As part of HMTC's virtual programming to mark National Hispanic Heritage Month, please join us for a virtual screening and discussion of the documentary film Viva La Causa: The Story of César Chávez and a Great Movement for Social Justice, presented in conjunction with the David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series. This film explores the farm workers strike in Delano, California, which lasted from 1965 until 1970, that paved the way for the creation of the United Farm Workers labor union. A post-screening discussion will be led by Nelson Melgar.

Como parte de la programación virtual de HMTC para conmemorar el Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana, únase a nosotros para una proyección virtual y discusión del documental “Viva La Causa: La historia de César Chávez y un Gran Movimiento por la Justicia Social,” presentado en conjunto con David Taub Reel Upstander Film Series. Esta película explora la huelga de trabajadores agrícolas en Delano, California, que duró desde 1965 hasta 1970, que allanó el camino para la creación del sindicato United Farm Workers. Nelson Melgar dirigirá una discusión posterior a la proyección.

(La película se proyectará con subtítulos en Español. El orador presentará en Inglés.)

HMTC needs your help now more than ever. Your donation will support HMTC’s virtual programming for students and adults. Help us continue to be able to provide Holocaust and Tolerance Education programs to schools and public programs for the community.

If you missed the post-screening discussion of the film, “Resistance,” when it first took place on August, 18, 2020, you can still watch the film on your own and watch a recording of the discussion:

To register visit MOTL.org/resistance-movie.