Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah: Four Sisters (part 2)

Ada Lichtman survived Sobibor death camp because she was a seamstress, valued by Nazi guards for her skill refashioning dolls snatched from Jewish children into presents they could give their own kids. Half a century later, in her home in Israel, she still sews dresses for tiny figurines.

Paula Biren lived because the controversial head of the Lodz Judenrat — the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council — drafted her into the “Jewish” police. “I’m guilty and ashamed that I’m still alive because I helped to deport my family,” she says.

And Hannah Marton escaped death because she was one of the 1,684 Jews spirited to Switzerland after a leader of the Budapest Jewish community paid Adolf Eichmann for their freedom. She’s still haunted by a single question: “Why me and not the others?”

These women’s stories were captured in Claude Lanzmann’s final opus, a quartet of films called SHOAH: Four Sisters. After screening The Hippocratic Oath last semester, the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center is honored to present the final three.

Sponsored by Temple Emanu-El board member Charles S. Cohen and The Cohen Media Group.