There Was Once...

A poignant documentary that describes a righteous Gentile's search for the lost Jews of her hometown of Kalocsa, Hungary. I highly recommend this film, which shows how anti-Semitism continues to exist through ignorance, even in a place where no Jews have lived for decades. Gabor Kalman, the film's producer/director, deserves accolades for bringing the story to the screen and highlighting the once-thriving Jewish community of his birth. The heroine of the film, Gyongyi Mago, deserves the honor she has earned from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles for her dedication to tolerance education. I hope the film will be seen by young people throughout the world as a reminder that We Must Never Forget the Victims of Genocide!

There was once... - and here it is again and again. Ms Mago starts an innocent enough investigation and comes up with - the truth. No explosions, no spectacular deductions, no car chases. But the elephant in the room is unmasked, things we should have always known but chose to ignore for six decades are revealed. Kalman and Mago came just in the nick of time, before we could feign innocence, blame distant powers and adverse circumstances, and close a chapter with smug self-satisfaction. In light of events unfolding in the very country the film takes place in, this film draws some frightening parallels. "There was once..." is a brave look in the mirror. Open your eyes...

This feature-length film by Gabor Kalman shifts back and forth from the usual "What happened?" focus of Holocaust documentaries to the question "What happens now?" It acquaints us with the efforts of a principled, activist individual to resurrect the disappeared Jewish history of a small Hungarian town, and--fleetingly--to reassemble the remains of a once-thriving community.

Kalman's intimate knowledge of the time and place--his own birthplace--and his persistence in interviewing those Jewish former inhabitants who survived the war brings urgency and heart to this material.

Part of its strength, in my opinion, lies in the implied extrapolations. Kalocsa is a small town with which almost no one is familiar. Here, in front of you, are those who witnessed the outrages of history. Now multiply the locations and the inhabitants and the outrages: the properties seized, the people exterminated, the choices to be made by the population who remained.

One commends the efforts of the film's central character, Gyongyi Mago to bring back the disappeared, living and dead, and to stimulate others to similarly honor those who have gone before us.