Legado, an award-winning film produced by The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, is a documentary that tells the story of the Jewish colonization in Argentina. Toward the end of the 19th century, approximately 800 Jews arrived in Buenos Aires, fleeing the persecution from Czrarist Russian pogroms. This film, in Yiddish and Spanish with English subtitles, tells their story.

Rabbi Dr. Victor Mirelman will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion. Rabbi Dr. Victor Mirelman , a native of Argentina, teaches Jewish history at Spertus. A leading expert in the history of the Jews in Latin America, he is rabbi emeritus of West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest.

Event Details: The event will take place on Sunday, October 30, 2011 at 2:00pm at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies facility at 610 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL.

For more information, please call 312.322.1773 or click here.

Tickets cost $18 | $10 for Spertus members | $8 for students.

You can find more information about Legado by clicking here.

Perhaps that contributed to the emotional atmosphere permeating the theater here on the evening of Oct. 14, when the film had its commercial release.

The 72-minute ”Legacy” — produced by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and based on a concept by the group’s co-founder, Baruch Tenembaum — tells the story of 820 Jews who escaped the pogroms of czarist Russia in 1889 and landed in Argentina aboard the steamship Wesser.

The film received an extended ovation and screening and hugs were exchanged in the audience, where comments in Yiddish could be heard.

Vivian Imar — who directed the picture along with Marcelo Trotta — said she was moved most deeply while making and watching the film when she heard Yiddish being spoken.

”I am interested in the film work that has to do with memory,” she told JTA. ”During the process, I felt close to my grandparent’s history — three of them came from Russia to Buenos Aires. Hearing the Yiddish meant so much to me.”

Today Imar, who is Jewish, boosts her 90-year-old grandmother’s spirits by singing her Yiddish songs like ”Arum den fair” and ”Oifn pripetchik.”

Upon arriving in Argentina, these Russian immigrant Jews, who later became know by some as ”Jewish Gauchos,” settled in Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, where they founded colonies with the aid of European Jewish philanthropist Baron Hirsch.

Deep religious values, an intense cultural life and a strong focus on educating their children suffused the immigrants’ daily struggle to tame the inhospitable brushwood.

Though it tells a serious story, the film is funny at times and the camera often comes to rest on the gauchos’ wrinkled faces, lined with stories of courage.

Renowned artists and intellectuals such as the Argentine Yiddish actress Shifra Lerer performed at the colonies’ communal centers, and the cooperative farms they built became models of that mode of living in Argentina.

At the film’s opening, Imar’s father, Israel, a 69-year-old lawyer, couldn’t hide his pride.

”I feel so emotional,” he said. ”My father gave me the torch of being Jewish. I have passed it on to my children, and I can clearly see they have received it.”

In ”Legacy,” already shown at several international film festivals, Lerer tells the story in Yiddish of a woman who arrived in the colonies on the Wesser when she was just 10 years old.

By film’s end, the audience has been introduced to five generations of her descendants as they visit the colonies to mark Yom Kippur.

For some in the audience, the film’s use of Yiddish meant a trip back to their childhoods, surrounded by grandparents telling shtetl tales, complaining because they couldn’t ”shlufn,” or sleep, and gossiping about their ”mishpuchas,” or families.

Among the crowd at the release were other survivors: people who survived the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in 1994 and of the Israeli Embassy here in 1992.

Escorted by bodyguards, Israeli Ambassador Rafael Eldad was reflective as he left the theater

”I think it is important to feel how rich these people were despite their poverty,” he told JTA.

”They had such a deep conviction of their roots, such a stubborn will. They not only have survived. They built ‘kehilot,’ ” or communities, he said, adding that ”Today, with so much plenty, we hardly keep in existence.”

Spreading out through the mall after the screening, some among the crowd continued speaking to one another in Yiddish.

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 25 (JTA) — It took the directors of the new documentary ”Legacy” nearly 10 years to complete the film, and by the time they had, many of the 200 aging ”Jewish gauchos” interviewed had died.

Perhaps that contributed to the emotional atmosphere permeating the theater here on the evening of Oct. 14, when the film had its commercial release.

The 72-minute ”Legacy” — produced by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and based on a concept by the group’s co-founder, Baruch Tenembaum — tells the story of 820 Jews who escaped the pogroms of czarist Russia in 1889 and landed in Argentina aboard the steamship Wesser.

The film received an extended ovation and screening and hugs were exchanged in the audience, where comments in Yiddish could be heard.

Vivian Imar — who directed the picture along with Marcelo Trotta — said she was moved most deeply while making and watching the film when she heard Yiddish being spoken.

”I am interested in the film work that has to do with memory,” she told JTA. ”During the process, I felt close to my grandparent’s history — three of them came from Russia to Buenos Aires. Hearing the Yiddish meant so much to me.”

Today Imar, who is Jewish, boosts her 90-year-old grandmother’s spirits by singing her Yiddish songs like ”Arum den fair” and ”Oifn pripetchik.”

Upon arriving in Argentina, these Russian immigrant Jews, who later became know by some as ”Jewish Gauchos,” settled in Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, where they founded colonies with the aid of European Jewish philanthropist Baron Hirsch.

Deep religious values, an intense cultural life and a strong focus on educating their children suffused the immigrants’ daily struggle to tame the inhospitable brushwood.

Though it tells a serious story, the film is funny at times and the camera often comes to rest on the gauchos’ wrinkled faces, lined with stories of courage.

Renowned artists and intellectuals such as the Argentine Yiddish actress Shifra Lerer performed at the colonies’ communal centers, and the cooperative farms they built became models of that mode of living in Argentina.

At the film’s opening, Imar’s father, Israel, a 69-year-old lawyer, couldn’t hide his pride.

”I feel so emotional,” he said. ”My father gave me the torch of being Jewish. I have passed it on to my children, and I can clearly see they have received it.”

In ”Legacy,” already shown at several international film festivals, Lerer tells the story in Yiddish of a woman who arrived in the colonies on the Wesser when she was just 10 years old.

By film’s end, the audience has been introduced to five generations of her descendants as they visit the colonies to mark Yom Kippur.

For some in the audience, the film’s use of Yiddish meant a trip back to their childhoods, surrounded by grandparents telling shtetl tales, complaining because they couldn’t ”shlufn,” or sleep, and gossiping about their ”mishpuchas,” or families.

Among the crowd at the release were other survivors: people who survived the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in 1994 and of the Israeli Embassy here in 1992.

Escorted by bodyguards, Israeli Ambassador Rafael Eldad was reflective as he left the theater

”I think it is important to feel how rich these people were despite their poverty,” he told JTA.

”They had such a deep conviction of their roots, such a stubborn will. They not only have survived. They built ‘kehilot,’ ” or communities, he said, adding that ”Today, with so much plenty, we hardly keep in existence.”

Spreading out through the mall after the screening, some among the crowd continued speaking to one another in Yiddish.

The exhibition took place at the ”B´nai Jeshurun” congregation and was organized by the Co-Chairs of the Latín América Committee of the Institution, Karen Radkowsky and Miriam Moussatche-Wechsler and member Carolyn Sorkin.

Legacy tells the history of Jewish colonization in Argentina as well as the experiences and memories of its protagonists since the arrival of the ship ”Wesser” in 1889 to the Buenos Aires’ harbour. The documentary has successfully participated in the Havana, Biarritz and Miami film festivals, among other competitions.

The presentation, carried out in a full theater, was in charge of Abigail Tenembaum and the directors of the film, Vivan Imar and Marcelo Trotta, who had active participation with the audience once the projection was over.

Argentine born actress Shifra Lerer, whose voice illustrates the documentary with stories in Yiddish and Dr. Vladimiro Rosenberg who, clearly moved, told memories of his childhood in his native colony, attended the exhibition.

At the beginning of May 1991, after a meeting with a group of former colonists and the powerful narration of their experiences, Baruch Tenembaum, founder of the IRWF, proposes to bring the Jewish colonization story to the movie format. Tenembaum, who is an Argentine, was born in the small colony of ”Las Palmeras”, in the Santa Fe province.

The shooting began after six months of investigations with high tech professional equipments. Lights, traveling dollies, cranes and all the necessary elements were transported to the different provinces in a specially prepared bus. The filming equipment was composed of distinguished movie and television professionals. More than twenty hours of unprecedented documentary material were filmed.

The shooting was made on different stages and among the locations where the most important takes were achieved are worth mentioning:

Entre Ríos: Basavilbaso – Dominguez – Villa Clara – San Salvador

Santa Fé: Moisesville – Las Palmeras – Palacios – Monigotes

Buenos Aires: Carlos Casares – Médanos

For the shooting, movie theaters such as ”Kadima” in Moisesville were reconditioned and set; countryside synagogues were opened, horses-thrown Russian carts were put into motion and antique furniture and artifacts belonging to the colonists were rescued.

The story begins at the end of the XIX century with the arrival of the first ships full of immigrants who, with help from the Jewish Colonization Association, arrived in a strange land, with no resources and with an unknown language. In 1889 the ship Wesser gets to the port of Buenos Aires with 820 Jews on board escaping the Russian regime of the Czars and the pogroms that were still taking place there with sinister regularity.

‘Legacy’ is a film of symbolical and historical value that transmits in each image the nostalgia, the drama, the hopes and the achievements of the epic colonization. A true tribute to the pioneers through the knowledge and memories of its protagonists and their descendants.

On Wednesday, December 12, 2001 the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation officially presented, at the exhibition hall ”Palais de Glace”, the documentary film ”Legacy” about the Jewish colonization in Argentina. The presentation was offered within the exhibition ”Jewish Gauchos”, organized between November 30 and December 16 by the Tourism, Culture and Sports Ministry.

There was a ten-minute preview of the eighty that the films lasts in its complete version. It was directed by the filmmakers Vivian Imar and Marcelo Trotta, based upon an idea of Baruch Tenembaum.

The presentation, which was attended by more than two hundred people, was in charge of Dr. Isaac Waxemberg and Dr. Alberto Kaplan (photograph), both from Moisesville, province of Santa Fe. They told their life experiences, they described life in the colonies and answered questions from the audience.

How it was made and what ‘Legacy’ is

After six months of research the shooting began with state-of-the-art equipment. Lights, travelling dollies, cranes and all the necessary elements were transported to the different provinces in a specially equipped bus. The shooting team was formed by a group of distinguished movie and television professionals. About twenty hours of documentary material were shot with unique testimonies and unpublished images.

The filming was performed in different parts and among the places where the most important registries took place it is worth mentioning:

• Entre Ríos: Basavilbaso- Dominguez- Villa Clara- San Salvador
• Santa Fé: Moisesville- Las Palmeras- Palacios- Monigotes
• Buenos Aires: Carlos Casares- Médanos

Theaters such as ”Kadima” in Moisesville were reconditioned and given the right atmosphere for the shooting; countryside synagogues were reopened, Russian carts pulled by horses were put into motion and furniture and antique items belonging to the colonists were rescued.

The story begins at the end of the XIX century with the arrival of the first ships crowded with immigrants who, with the help of the Jewish Colonization Association, arrived to a strange land, without resources and with an unknown language. In the countryside they had to fight against plagues, droughts, frosts and flooding.

‘Legacy’ is a film of symbolic and historical value which transmits in each image the nostalgia, the drama, the hopes and the achievements of the colonizing epic deeds. A true tribute to the pioneers through the memories of its protagonists and descendants.

At the beginning of May, 1991, after a meeting with a group of former colonists and the passionate narration of their experiences, the idea of a rebirth in a full-length film of the Jewish Colonization in Argentina arises.

”Legacy” (Argentina, 2003). Directors and script writers: Vivián Imar and Marcelo Trotta. Based on a Baruch Tenenbaum idea. Sound: Jorge and Javier Stavrópulos. Music: Vivián Tabbush and Javier Zentner. Voice-over: Shifra Lerer and Cristina Murta. A documentary produced by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation along with the Centro de Investigación Cinematográfica (CIC) and the support of the INCAA (National Institute of Cinema). Available in Idish and Spanish. Length: 90 minutes. Video taped. No restrictions.

Towards the end of the XIX Century, about 800 Jews from all ages, coming from Kamenetz-Podolsk, Podolia (located in the West of Ukraine), arrived at the Buenos Aires port in the Wasser steamship They were running away from the Czarist persecution and from the Pogroms. Once they were here, and after overcoming several difficulties, in order to find a source of work which would allow them first to survive and then to make some progress in life, they gathered in colonies, spread in different provinces, such as Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, La Pampa, Santiago del Estero and Buenos Aires. Most of these colonies were constituted thanks to the initiative of Baron Mauricio de Hirsch, who gave them about one hundred hectare per group.

The path to cooperativism

This was the first agricultural Jewish colonization in Argentina which paved the way to cooperativism. It gave rise to a new way of life which, beyond tradition and faith matters (or rather because of them), would leave marks in their lives, in the lives of their children and grandchildren and in the lives of the rest of the Argentinians.

That is the spirit which guided the documentary makers Vivián Imar and Marcelo Trotta to make Baruch Tenenbaum’s dream about these pioneers, who would become popularly known as the ”gauchos judíos” [”Jewish gauchos”], come true. Beyond the local film experiences – such as ”Los gauchos judíos” [”The Jewish Gauchos”] by Juan José Jusid, based on an Alberto Gerchunoff’s story, and more recently ”Un amor en Moisés Ville” [ ”A love in Moses Village”] – ”Legado” [”Legacy”] has come to fill the gap on this theme.

The structure chosen is in the voice over of Esther’s story (in Idish). Esther is one of the many women who came as little girls in those steamships and formed part of the foundation of Moisés Ville [Moses Village] (a place which is considered to be the mother of all the colonies). And the structure is also about the story of her daughter, who in spite of having moved to other directions when she grew up, she came back home on the Iom Kippur Day (Day of the Pardon).

It is precisely the recovery of Shifra Lerer’s voice, one of the most outstanding features of the Imar and Trotta work,. Shifra Lerer is an actress who became one of the remarkable women of the Argentine Jewish Community and who became part of film castings directed by Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen, among others, in the United States of America. Her voice, (and a few seconds of her image) gets to move the audience when describing the daily work in the country, but, especially, when explaining the importance of the books and the libraries in the cultural education of the Jews, scattered all over the world, and also of the theatre.

The documentary also depicts, with a meticulous film camera, the wonderful architecture of the Kadima Society Theater, in Moses Valley, its old programs, and the echo of the musical themes which were heard during its most glorious days, when personalities such as Berta Singerman or writers like Samuel Eichelbaum and César Tiempo, among others, filled the stage.

The work compiles the voices of those who lived, were born and grew up there, like that of the very Tenenbaum (who presently lives in New York), which sums up the feeling produced by the remembrance of that land which , as he says, he has never left. A special point must be made about the fact that for the documentary recompilation, films of that first period were used – the majority of them being Max Glucksman’s newsreels – a plague of locusts, droughts, floods, which destroyed the crops of the tenant farmers, But, as they themselves say, ” the land watered with tears always gives back joy” or as some time ago Gerchunoff wrote ”there grew doctors where the Jewish gauchos sowed seeds”, as it happened to many of these immigrants with different customs from those of this side of the world, but with the knowledge – and the strength – of centuries of ”exodus”.

Translation: Nora Belletieri

On behalf of the Wallenberg Foundation, the award was received by its president, Father Horacio Moreno; the vice-president, Natalio Wengrower; and Ricardo and Israel Faerman, both Directors of International Relations of the organization founded in Argentina. The prize also went to the IRWF, for the importance of its cultural and educational enterprises. Moisés Korin, Cultural Director of the AMIA and Lyor Haiat, Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Israel, were the persons in charge of giving out the prizes.

The film directors Vivian Imar and Marcelo Trotta, selected by Tenembaum in 1992, were rewarded with the Prize Argentores 2004, together with other national and international recognitions, due to their ability in directing the film. They were grateful to Ana Weinstein, Director of the Centre of Information and Documentation on Argentine Judaism belonging to the AMIA, for her valuable collaboration in contributing historical documents.

”Legacy. I never left my Village”, is a documentary film which narrates the saga of the Jewish colonization in Argentina, edited in a DVD format and it can be bought with subtitles in English and French.

Shifra Lerer, mythical Argentine actress of the Idish theatre, who has been living in the United States for many years, received a special mention. Shifra, who is 91 years old, became world known in 1997 when she played one of the leading parts in the Woody Allen film ”Deconstructing Harry”.

In ”Legacy” Mrs. Lerer’s voice is used for the part of a grandmother who remembers her arrival to Argentina on the ship ”Wesser”, in 1889. Her ”voice over” creates the central story which branches out, giving form to the whole narration. The actress Cristina Murta is Esther’s voice, her granddaughter.

The documentary is just one of the links of the chain of cultural events which have taken place during four decades of uninterrupted work by the IRWF and its associated interconfesional organizations. Between these achievements we must mention, the Memorial Mural for the Victims of the Holocaust and of the criminal attacks against the AMIA and the Israeli Embassy; installed inside the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires, and inaugurated in 1997 by the Cardinal Antonio Quarracino. This monument, with no precedents the history of Jewish-Christian relations, has been admired, since its inauguration, by more than five million people and the Argentine Central Post Office has issued a stamp to commemorate it. In November 2004 a replica was inaugurated in Berlin. We must also remember the fresco ”Basílica de la Anunciación (Basilica of the Annunciation)” painted by the great artist Raúl Soldi in 1968, in the Basilica of Nazareth, Israel. This painting is a tribute to the Virgin of Luján, it is situated in the Holy Land and is a symbol of the necessary understanding that must reign between the sons of the three great monotheistic religions.

The Parish Priest, Annemarie Werner, has sent a letter of thanks from Berlin, in which she announces a special prize granted to the film, awarded by her congregation, due to the exaltation of the values of dialogue and Jewish-Christian understanding.

Translation: María Pensavalle