“Back in Berlin” Post-Film Discussion

Shortly after his father’s death, Bobby returns to his native England and discovers a suitcase full of documents, letters and photos, documenting the story of his family who perished in the Holocaust – the story his father never told him.He turns to Manuel, his German-born childhood friend, to translate the documents. Manuel, who hails from a family steeped in cinematic history and whose aunt was married to Stanley Kubrick, reveals that he too has recently uncovered a dark family secret: his father’s uncle was the infamous Nazi filmmaker Veit Harlan, director of the film “Jud Suss” – banned from screening to the present day and considered the most notorious anti-Semitic propaganda film in history. Together they embark on a voyage to Berlin to discover more about their respective pasts- a journey which puts their friendship to the test.

Dr. Natalia Aleksiun

Dr. Natalia Aleksiun, professor of modern Jewish history at Touro College, New York is the incoming Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida-Gainesville. She studied Polish and Jewish history at the Warsaw University, the Graduate School of Social Studies in Warsaw and Hebrew University in Jerusalem and New York University. She received her doctorates from Warsaw University and New York University. She is the author of Where To? The Zionist Movement in Poland, 1944–1950) (Warsaw, 2002), co-editor of several volumes, including Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 29: Writing Jewish History in Eastern Europe (2017), and European Holocaust Studies, vol. 3: (Places, Spaces and Voids in the Holocaust). She is co-editor of East European Jewish Affairs. In 2019, she published a critical edition of Gerszon Taffet’s Destruction of Żółkiew Jews. Her most recent book, Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust, was published in 2021 with Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. She is co-editor of East European Jewish Affairs. She is currently working on a book about the so-called cadaver affair at European universities in the 1920s and 1930s and on a project dealing with daily lives of Jews in hiding in Galicia during the Holocaust.

Bobby Lax

Bobby Lax is a seasoned TV director who started his career whilst still in England, in the social action department of Granada TV, one of the UK’s leading independent networks.

After moving to Israel in 1992, he worked as a director at Israel Educational Television for 6 years, until moving on to develop a freelance career. Over the years he worked on a wide range of major TV productions, from satire & game shows to commercials & cookery shows. He was part of the founding team & in-house director of the highly successful “Hop!” children’s channel, and in latter years has returned to his passion for quality children’s programming, developing and co-creating several award winning TV series’.

“Back in Berlin ” is his first full length documentary film and received the Special Jury Mention at its premiere in the Haifa FIlm Festival in 2021.