“H I Jew Positive” Post-Film Discussion with Film Director Ronit Kertsner

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with Partnership2Gether, is excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “H I Jew Positive” and engage in a post-film discussion with the film director, Ronit Kertsner, and two Jewish Poles who are featured in the film. CWB scholar Dr. Natalia Aleksiun will open the discussion.

Every day, Catholic Poles discover that their parents kept their true identity hidden from them – the fact they were Jewish, second and third-generation to Holocaust survivors. It happens to people of all ages from all socioeconomic backgrounds, in villages and in big cities. These are The New Jews of Poland. Ronit Kertsner followed 4 New Jews over the course of 15 years, following the conflicts in their lives and observing the changes in Polish society from 1997-2013. This is a story about the search for love and identity, a journey that began in Warsaw, moved to Israel, and returned to Poland. A voyage of people whose identity has been shattered.

“I’ve got it… I am H I Jew positive,” a young Polish student summed up his feelings when he found out he was Jewish.

Ronit Kertsner

Born in Jerusalem in 1956, Ronit Kertsner is a documentary filmmaker. After her military service, she was admitted to the Cinema Department at Tel Aviv University. Upon completion, she began work as a professional editor, and has edited dozens of documentary films in her career. For the last 17 years, she has directed and produced seven documentaries, including “Menachem and Fred” (2009), “Torn” (2011), “H. I. Jew Positive” (2013), and “Refugee Lullaby” (2019). The daughter of American parents, Ronit is married with two daughters.

Dr. Natalia Aleksiun

Natalia Aleksiun is the Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Graduate School of Touro College. 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 doctorate from Warsaw University in 2001. Her dissertation won the Polish Prime Minister’s Award for doctoral students and appeared in print as Where to? The Zionist Movement in Poland, 1944-1950 (in Polish) in 2002. In 2010, she received her second PhD from New York University based on her dissertation entitled: “Ammunition in the Struggle for National Rights: Jewish Historians in Poland between the Two World Wars”. She was a co-editor of the twentieth volume of Polin, devoted to the memory of the Holocaust. She published in Yad Vashem Studies, Polish Review, Dapim, East European Jewish Affairs, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Polin, Gal Ed, East European Societies and Politics and German History. Together with Brian Horowitz she is editing a volume 29 of Polin titled Writing Jewish History. 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.

A note from The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh:
“The title of the movie we are promoting for this program, H I Jew Positive, is a quote taken from a young Polish teenager who was interviewed during the film, in which he talks about his personal reaction after learning about his Jewish identity for the first time. The Jewish Federation is in no way making light of HIV or equating being Jewish with a virus. In context, the teenager was describing in a derogatory way his feelings about coming out as a Jew in Poland and the way it could lead to the loss of friends, jobs, and even family connections. It is important to understand the context in which the film’s title was born, and you are invited to learn more about this by registering for this zoom and watching the movie in full in advance.”