Press Contact: Teri L. Sullivan
WKNO/Channel 10
(901) 729-8735
tlsullivan@wkno.org
March 17, 2011
For Immediate Release
TWO NEW DOCUMENTARIES RECALL THE STORIES
OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
This April, WKNO will be airing several programs that document stories of the Holocaust and celebrate Jewish life and the Jewish faith, including two dramatic new documentary films that shed light on the experience of children who survived the Holocaust.
The award-winning film Prisoner of Her Past makes its local television debut on Tuesday, April 26 at 9 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10 (repeating Wednesday, April 27 at 9 p.m. on WKNO2). A secret childhood trauma resurfaces, 60 years later, to unravel the life of Holocaust survivor Sonia Reich. Her son, Chicago Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich, journeys across the United States and Eastern Europe to uncover why his mother believes the world is conspiring to kill her. Along the way, he finds a family he never knew he had. This film is the first to illuminate a little-known illness: late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Another new documentary is Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers, which airs Sunday Sunday, May 1 at 9 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10 (repeating Monday, May 2 at 9 p.m. on WKNO2). A twenty-nine year old Polish Catholic social worker named Irena Sendler saw the atrocities of the Warsaw ghetto and established a network of cohorts to forge identification papers and place children in Catholic safe houses and orphanages, saving over 2,500 Jewish children. Several of those who survived this ordeal give moving firsthand accounts of the feelings of confusion, resentment and abandonment that accompanied leaving their homes and assuming Catholic names and identities. Sendler, who died in 2008 at the age of 98, appears in the film to tell her own story and some of the people whose lives she helped save.
Two local programs recalling the Holocaust will also be airing in April. Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust airs Thursday, April 14 at 9 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10 (repeating Friday, April 15 at 9 p.m. on WKNO2). This 2006 documentary from Nashville Public Television (NPT) follows the Tennessee Holocaust Commission (THC) in its efforts to interview and photograph all survivors and liberators of the Holocaust currently living in Tennessee. Transported Lives: Memphians Remembering the Holocaust airs Thursday, April 21 at 9 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10 (repeating Friday, April 22 at 9 p.m. on WKNO2). Fourteen survivors who now live in Memphis, Tennessee give personal testimonies about their experiences in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.
The national PBS series Secrets of the Dead will be airing the episode "Escape from Auschwitz" on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 p.m. on WKNO/Channel 10 (repeating Thursday, April 28 at 7 p.m. on WKNO2). This episode tells the story of two young Slovak Jews, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who managed to escape, determined to tell the world about the atrocities being committed by the Nazis at the camp.
WKNO is a non-profit, private foundation serving the Mid-South for more than 50 years.
An important community resource, WKNO uses the power of non-commercial public broadcasting to provide the Mid-South with quality educational and cultural programs that inform, entertain, and inspire. For more information: wkno.org.
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