Love It Was Not Post Film Discussion with Avi Ben Hur and Maya Sarfaty, the director/writer, and Miki Marin daughter of Roza/Shoshana Orenstein

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Liberation 75 and sponsored by Dr. Daryl Miller is excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “Love It Was Not” and engage in a post-film discussion with the film director/writer, Maya Sarfaty, and Miki Marin daughter of Roza/Shoshana Orenstein in conversation with CWB Scholar, Avi Ben-Hur.
A tragic love story between a prisoner and her captor. Flamboyant and full of life, Helena Citron is taken to Auschwitz as a young woman, and soon finds unlikely solace under the tutelage of Franz Wunsch, a high-ranking SS officer who falls in love with her and her magnetic singing voice. Risking a certain execution if caught, their forbidden relationship went on until her miraculous liberation. But when a letter arrives from Wunsch’s wife, thirty years later, begging Helena to testify on Wunsch’s behalf, she’s faced with an impossible decision: will she help the man who brutalised so many lives, but saved hers, along with some of the people closest to her?

Maya Sarfaty
Maya Sarfaty is a director and writer, known for Love It Was Not (2020), The Most Beautiful Woman (2016) and Overtime (2014). Filmmaker Sarfaty painstakingly worked through the archives of Israel’s Yad Vashem and Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, looking for recordings of women indexed as workers in the “Kanada” facility at Auschwitz and listening for mentions of Helena and Franz in their personal survival stories.

Miki Marin
Miki Marin, is an actress, director, and co-owner of the School of Arts in Ha’Bustan, Natanya (in Israel), which she has run with her husband, Ze’evik Marin, for 45 years. Miki and Ze’evik have two daughters, Or and Stav Marin, who are both dancers and choreographers.

The film, Love It Was Not (2020), directed by Maya Safarty – a former dance and theater student of Miki’s – tells the unbelievable story of Miki’s mother, Roza/Shoshana Orenstein, and her sister, Helena (Zippora) Citron, during their time in Aushwitz.

Avi Ben-Hur

Scholar in Residence

A Brooklyn native, Avi Ben-Hur moved to Israel in 1983. From 2003-2008 Avi was Director of the Archaeological Seminars School for Israeli Tour Guides. In 2008 Avi participated in re-writing the curriculum of the National Guiding courses for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. As a “Scholar in Residence, Avi has lectured, taught and facilitated workshops in the US, Warsaw, Prague, Berlin and Greece. From 1996-2000, Avi taught in Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies. As a guide, Avi has specialized working with organizations focusing on political issues (such as AIPAC & CIJA), inter-faith programs and Holocaust studies. At Present, Avi is an examiner for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism Licensing Boards and is the ongoing scholar in residence of Classrooms Without Borders.

Thank you to our partners:
The full inclusion of people of all abilities is a core value of Classrooms Without Borders. For questions or to make requests for special accommodations contact [email protected]