“The House on Wannsee Street: Memoirs of a German Jewish Family” Film and Post Film Discussion with the filmmaker Poli Martínez Kaplun and her mother Helen Kaplun in conversation with Avi Ben Hur

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with Rodef Shalom Congregation and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, is excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “The House on Wannsee Street” and engage in a post-film discussion with the filmmaker Poli Martínez Kaplun and her mother Helen Kaplun in conversation with Avi Ben Hur.

The House on Wannsee Street: Memoirs of a German Jewish Family
The movie tells the story of film director Poli, who lives in Buenos Aires. Her son decides to take his Bar Mitzvah, in spite of the fact that Poli has no religious traditions, though she does know her mother is of Jewish origin.

Poli digs deep into her family’s history, asking herself why she was not raised as a Jew. She searches in family albums and 8 mm movies, and finds turn-of-the-century images of her great grandfather Otto, a lay Jewish German philosopher persecuted by the Nazi. The family is forced to leave their house in Berlin because of Nazi persecution. They first move to Egypt, then Switzerland and finally Argentina, where they need to get Church papers to enter the country, since after Second World War Jewish were not accepted as immigrants.

Poli investigates how her mother and her two aunts live in the present with this story of exile, where the Jewish and German identity is marked by exile.

Eighty years later, Poli returns to Germany to her grandmother’s house on Wannsee Street, a few meters from where the Final Solution was decreed for all Jews in Europe.

About Poli Martinez Kaplun (Director/Executive Producer/Scriptwriter)

Poli Martinez Kaplun was born in New York, United States and currently resides in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

She is a film producer and director educated in the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, with a Bachelor in Communication Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires.

She completed specialization courses in television and film, in the tertiary of the School of Canal 13 and then continued her studies in National Audiovisual Institute of France (INA) where she resided for two years.

Going back to Argentina, she opened her audiovisual communication agency and production company, where for 25 years ago she makes documentaries, advertising videos, training videos and projects for major national and international companies. She regularly co-produces documentaries with the French television.

In the year 2017, she made her debut film “Lea and Mira leave their mark”, a documentary about two women, survivors of Auschwitz, that today have more than 90 years of age. The film was selected in the official contest of 10 international festivals and honored with 3 awards for Best Women director, music and editing by the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards.

About Helen Kaplun
Helen Kaplun was born in 1942 in Alexandria and emigrated to Argentina in 1949. She studied psychology at the University of Buenos Aires and has been a psychoanalyst in this city ever since. she lived for several years in Ithaka, New York.

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