Tv Documentaries on Holocaust Survivors and Their Children

Two documentaries about the gulf between Holocaust survivors and their children are scheduled for presentation on WNET (Channel 13) here before the end of the month.

“Breaking the Silence: The Generation after the Holocaust” will be telecast on WNET Friday (April 27) and will be shown on public TV stations in 156 cities in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Most of the presentations outside of New York City will be shown during the coming weekend, with a few scheduled for the first week in May.

The other documentary, “A Generation Apart,” will be shown on WNET on April 30. This documentary was initially shown as a film in motion picture theaters in Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Berkeley.

In New York, the showings of “A Generation Apart” was accompanied by a shorter documentary, “The Well,” reportedly the first film in Yiddish to be made in the United States in some 30 years.

“Breaking the Silence” portrays a number of survivor parents and their children who are trying to break the silence that has separated them. The parents are among an estimated 200,000 Holocaust survivors who settled in the United States. Eva Fogelman, a psychotherapist and doctoral student at City University of New York, is writer and coproducer of the documentary.

“Breaking the Silence” was produced by Documentaries for Learning in Boston and distributed by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

“A Generation Apart” was made by two children of survivors, Jack and Danny Fisher. Jack Fisher was a filmmaker in Israel when he started the documentary.

“The Well” was written directed and edited by David Greenwald, with English subtitles. It depicts a young Jew from Eastern Europe in 1939 as he gradually becomes aware of the fate awaiting his people. He survives by fleeing to the United States.