In 1994, Mel Gibson made a film called Passion of the Christ. It was accused of portraying a
particularly anti-semitic perspective of the Christian Bible. As a result of the film, it came to light
that Mel Gibson is a Holocaust denier. Moreover, many of his compatriot Holocaust deniers
surfaced to support him, and the world learned a sad and shocking lesson about historical
revisionists.

My grandmother survived Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. My grandfather survived several
concentration camps. Both of them lost most of their families to the murderous Nazis. The
Holocaust had been an integral part of my identity for most of my life, and I could not believe
that these people were believing, and claiming publicly, that it never happened.
My grandmother had been interviewed by two formal programs, one run by Spielberg and one
by Yad Vashem. In both cases, the interviewer did not speak Yiddish. As a result, key parts of
the story were misunderstood by the interviewer and follow-up questions were then formed
based on a misinterpretation. It was frustrating to watch both of them.

I wanted a good video. I wanted one that I could share with my children and grandchildren, so
that they could hear the story of the Holocaust from their own flesh and blood. I did not want my
children to learn about the Holocaust only from books, and I certainly never wanted to hear my
children refer to the Holocaust in the third person. It was we who were targeted, not they.
I asked my grandmother, Miriam Hendler, if she would sit for an interview. I explained that she
and her friends were still alive to tell the story and yet deniers were growing in numbers. I asked
her to think how many deniers there would be when she and her friends had been dead for 50
or 100 years. She agreed to do an interview with me.

I filmed three hours of her story. I spent months editing it to put her stream of consciousness
into chronological order, and I ended up with 2 hours and 20 minutes of film. I put it on a DVD,
shared it with a few members of my family, sent a copy to the US Holocaust Museum, and put
the master copy in a safe. There it sat for ten years.

In the interim, some genius invented YouTube, and now each of us can have our own
television station. I have posted my grandmother’s video to YouTube in an effort to increase
exposure to it, aid its immortality, and hopefully, share it with you.
If your children are old enough to handle it, I hope you will sit them down and watch it with
them. If not, I hope you will do so when they become old enough.
You can find it on YouTube by searching Miriam Hendler or using this link: