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Rabbi turned filmmaker makes riveting Holocaust movie: ‘Jewish history is very powerful’

Lynn said there can be huge power in filmmaking to tell the Jewish story on a global stage.

By Troy O. Fritzhand, The Algemeiner

A US-based Jewish educator has brought to life a movie about one of the more unknown but riveting stories from the Holocaust.

After years of educating Jewish youth around the world, Rabbi Shmuel Lynn never expected to find himself back in the art of filmmaking, he told the Algemeiner in a recent interview about his new movie, Bardejov.

Raised secular in Florida, Lynn was once focused intently on a career in Hollywood — with Jewish studies nowhere near the front of his mind.

Indeed, after completing a degree in film from Duke University, he packed his bags and headed to Los Angeles to focus on writing scripts for movies.

“I was always involved in the arts, music, and theater,” he said.

But after a spark of interest in Judaism, Lynn began a multi-year journey in which he studied in Jerusalem, before giving up film altogether.

He began doing Jewish outreach work in 2004 on college campuses, mainly at the University of Pennsylvania.

Seeing the success he had teaching and influencing people on campus, Lynn helped to found Meor Manhattan, an organization geared toward Jewish outreach for young professional Jews in New York City.

The organization is now called Olami.

During this time, Lynn wanted to launch international summits in places where Jews had thrived but ultimately suffered in the past, such as in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition.

“The idea is that if you know where you come from, you will cherish and appreciate the sacrifice that got you where you are… Generations ran away from the Cossacks, the Nazis, etc,. for you to have the beautiful life you have today. Jewish history is very powerful.”

It was on these trips that Lynn’s artistic background came into play.

He said his team was brainstorming ideas to captivate the large number of Jews on the trip, and the concept of staging a play came up.

Lynn jumped at the opportunity, putting together one-off plays in the streets of places such as Spain. “Street theater — it was a eureka moment,” Lynn said, describing the power of arts to educate people.

Back in the US, Lynn’s organization put together an interactive play experience called “New York Circa 1909” where attendees could put themselves in the shoes of Jewish immigrants who came to America at the turn of the 20th century.

Another place Olami brings young Jews is Poland. “Not just to see the [Nazi] concentration camps,” he explained, “but there is a celebration of Jewish life you can find there.”

One day, as the group was passing through Slovakia, Lynn remembered that a donor he had spoken to mentioned he must go to the town of Bardejov, which led the rabbi to arrange a visit.

Upon arriving, “the man who met us was so excited, he cried when he saw us. Not many people know the Slovakian story,” Lynn remarked, noting its early collaboration with the Nazis.

One particularly moving story from the town during the Holocaust was that 312 girls were set to be rounded up and sent to a “shoe factory,” which in reality was the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.

Just hours before they were set to be deported, however, the true plan to send the girls to Auschwitz was discovered.

The townspeople then gathered where Rafuel Lowy, the town’s rabbi, devised a plan to give Typhus vaccines to the girls, which allowed them to show positive for the disease, leading to a forced quarantine of the town.

In the end, the girls were saved, though a few years later Lowy was himself captured and sent to his death at Auschwitz.

Lynn was captivated by the episode, calling it “a Hollywood story for the ages.”

From one miracle to the next, as he described, he was able to write a screenplay for the movie and have it directed, where it is now available on platforms such as Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Lynn said there can be huge power in filmmaking to tell the Jewish story on a global stage.

“We need to put as many bricks of testimony as we can. We need to flood the airwaves with true stories of Jewish history,” he said, adding that is the only way, as “people whose minds need to be recalibrated aren’t reading books.”

Lynn said that while being a rabbi will remain his main work, he is excited to work to see other moving stories like those of Bardejov come to fruition on the big screen.