Continuing to fight for Chari

The idea for this film was a long time coming. I grew up hearing the stories of my grandparents and my parents; stories that were riddled with struggle, persecution and immigration, but that seemingly ended in perseverance and success. I grew up thinking these stories were normal.

When you attend Jewish day school for 13 years and Jewish summer camp for 7(ish), you are bound to live in a bubble. It doesn’t matter how many outside activities you participate in or how many friends you make who aren’t Jewish, the reality of your everyday experience is rooted deeply in the Jewish community. Every year my grandmother or the grandparent of one of my classmates would come in and share their story of survival. Most of my friends were first or second generation Americans, most of them knew their family history and how they arrived in New York. So, it wasn’t until I went to college that I realized I was different.

All it took was one conversation and the facade of normalcy fell fast. I don’t recall the context of the conversation, all I remember is his reaction. “My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor,” I repeated matter-of-factly. His jaw dropped and my friend Carlos, whose family had its own unique history of struggle and perseverance, looked at me with his big brown eyes and exclaimed, “that’s so cool!” I was taken aback; Cool? I wouldn’t necessarily choose that adjective to describe her experiences. I held on to this reaction for a long time until I finally understood what he was trying to convey by using that term. It wasn’t “cool” that she had endured such horrors, it wasn’t that her story was “cool”. No, it was that I had this unique connection to history. I was so personally shaped by a world event. So many things in the history books had to have been written a very specific way for me to be here. So, no, it’s not “cool” that my grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, but it is kind of cool that she left behind this huge legacy in her offspring.

I was always interested in her story, toeing the fine line between wanting to know more and being a little fearful of knowing too much. My father grew up knowing that his mother was a survivor, but it wasn’t until 1982 - two years after her first grandchildren were born - that he heard her story. We all know the facts, but when you really ask me to tell you her story - despite hearing it hundreds of times - I have trouble relaying it. My dad does too. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

So, how did we get here? How did I come to decide to make a documentary about the generational effects of trauma and the Holocaust? My career has been built on storytelling and while it’s been almost exclusively focused in sports, it has always been rooted in social justice and the bigger picture. When I first set out to study journalism, I was motivated by a few things - my love for writing, my passion for stories, my love for sports and my passion for social justice. I wanted to tell stories that mattered. I will never forget reading about Jackie Robinson in third grade or watching a documentary about Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton in High School. I still truly do believe in the power of sports to create change, to force us to have the hard discussions about our society that we struggle to verbalize off the field. I still plan to dedicate my career to telling these stories, but I am not sure I can do that before I tell this one.

For years I’ve been discussing documenting my grandmother’s story. It’s so important that we continue to tell it, that it continues to be heard and learned from. In the few years between my graduation and her death in March of 2018, I focused on growing as a producer, storyteller and creative and struggled with the idea of subjecting her to interviews as her mind started to wane. I didn’t want to inflict more pain on her and I also knew that unfortunately I could no longer rely on her as a reliable narrator. When she passed peacefully at the age of 95, I was going through a professional transition. My contract at NBC was coming to an end and I had decided to take the plunge into the freelance world. At the same time, the politics of the world had shifted and hateful rhetoric and actions were resounding throughout the globe. And then there was the next generation - my niece and nephews and my cousins’ children were beginning to join us in the world and I realized that they would never hear her story first-hand the way we did, yet everyday they would also be effected by it. The idea of making some sort of film about my grandmother began to take hold again and then came her funeral. I wish I would have been able to film it. Each of her grandchildren gave a eulogy and with each speech I learned something new about a woman I had known my entire life. She had a unique connection to each of us and fostered a relationship that was really just between her and each of her grandchildren. The real turn came when my dad stepped up to the lectern. It was his eulogy that gave me the working title for this film and it was his words that gave me the final push I needed to realize I didn’t have a choice - I have to make this film. He talked about how my grandmother had lived through so much and lost everything. He explained how the room filled with people who loved her and who carry on her legacy was her way of defeating the Nazis. Our family is how she won the war.

My motivations for working on this film could fill pages and pages of a book, but what I really hope is that it will become apparent as I embark on this process to discover how Chari’s (Charlotte, Grandma, Grandma Honey) trauma lives on in the second, third and now fourth generations of her descendants.  We may have won the battle, but the fight isn’t over - there is still more work to do.