“The road to Babi Yar” Post-Film Discussion

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and Liberation75 is excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “the road to Babi Yar” and engage in a post-film discussion with the documentary Film Maker Boris Maftsir in conversation with CWB Scholar, Avi Ben-Hur.
“The Road to Babi Yar” is the newest film of the documentary project by Boris Maftsir, about the Shoah of the Jews of the Soviet Union. With the invasion of Germany into the territory of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a new stage in the history of the Shoah began, characterized by the massacres of Jews, exemplified in the Ukraine.

“The road to Babi Yar” shows the events of the first 100 days of the occupation of Ukraine, during which the Nazis, with the participation of local residents, began killing Jews directly in their places of residence, as well as the evolution of the mass murder system in hundreds of killing sites, symbolized by Babi Yar.

Conversations with historians, local residents – eyewitnesses to those events and Jewish survivors of the Shoah, presented in the film, allow us to recreate a comprehensive and painful picture of the fate of the Jews of Ukraine during the Shoah.

Boris Maftsir
Boris Maftsir was born in Riga, Latvia, in the then-Soviet Union. In 1970 he was arrested by the KGB and sentenced to one year in prison on charges of Zionist activity. In 1971, he emigrated to Israel, where he enrolled as a student with the newly-established Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. He graduated with the department’s first graduating class.

Maftsir started his career as a producer with the Israeli Film Service, where he grew to become the Service Manager. In 2009-2017, he founded and chaired the documentary film department at the Haifa WIZO Academic Center. Throughout his distinguished career, he has produced over 200 documentaries and directed over 30 films.

In 1998-1999, Maftsir became Director of the Department of Culture and Art at the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture. In 1999-2001, he was appointed Director General of the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. In 2003-2005, he served as Head of Delegation of the Jewish Agency in Russia, Belarus and the Baltic States.

In 2006, Maftsir was appointed Director of Yad Vashem’s Names Project, which aimed to recover the names of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust in the USSR. This project became life-altering for him. After completing his service at Yad Vashem in 2012, he dedicate his time fully to his multipart documentary project “Searching for the Unknown Holocaust.” Traveling all across the former Soviet countries of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, and the Baltics, Maftsir is documenting events that have until now not fully become part of the collection memory of the Holocaust.

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]