ONE SHOT: Documentary Institute Associate Director Cindy Hill shoots Vernon Tott snapping a picture of two Nazi labor camp survivors who flew to visit him and look for themselves in the photos he took on their liberation day. Ahlem survivors gate Tott the Pentax camera and a silver kiddush cup. (Photo by Boaz Dvir)
Tott’s list
Documentary Institute captures a former soldier's quest to identify survivors in his Holocaust photos
By Boaz Dvir
Thursday, Feb. 17
Flying to Sioux City, Churchill Roberts and Cindy Hill feel nervous. It’s not the flight or the Iowa winter they’re worried about; it’s the person they’re going to see, the subject of their latest documentary, Angel of Ahlem.
Vernon Tott is dying.
For the previous 10 months, they’ve been documenting the 80-year-old former Army radio operator’s mission to track down the 40 survivors from 19 photos he took April 10, 1945, the day his 84th Infantry Division liberated the Ahlem Nazi labor camp. In this whirlwind stretch, during which Roberts, Hill and their Documentary Institute teammates traveled with Tott to Germany and Poland, they’ve seen him fade as his prostate cancer spread to his bladder.
“Watching Vernon’s health decline has taken a toll on us,” says Roberts, the institute’s co-director. “We’ve grown really close to him and his family.”
WATCH WHAT HAPPENS: Co-Directors Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts aim for a theatrical release for their ninth project, Angel of Ahlem.
They hope he makes it to tomorrow’s synagogue ceremony in his honor and today’s meeting with two survivors who are flying in from Israel and New Jersey to meet him and look for their gaunt images in his 60-year-old snapshots.
Joined by New York-based genealogist Roni Liebowitz and North Carolina-based freelance lighting and audio specialist Terry Bishop, Roberts and Hill call Tott’s wife Betty as soon as they step off the plane. She reports that he’s hanging on.
When they arrive at Tott’s simple house, which overlooks withered hills, they find him sitting on his La-Z-Boy speaking with New York Times writer Jodi Wilgoren. Hill straps on a digital camera to capture every potentially useable moment from here on out. She zooms in on Tott, whose skin is so pale, it’s nearly transparent, and his muscles are so limp, he needs a wheelchair to venture outside his house. He’s not the man they remember from the previous summer, when they traveled with him to the site of Ahlem, outside Hannover, Germany. “Back then, he moved around, he was animated,” Roberts recalls. “He even drank beer at the bar.”
But Tott’s cognitive skills remain sharp. He’s almost cheerful. After greeting his visitors, he returns to his NYT interview. Hill records his matter-of-fact yet passionate disposition. Roberts sits back unless he feels he must get involved. Sure enough, after a few minutes, he jumps in when he overhears Tott announce that he’s going down to the basement to look for the suddenly missing original photos.
“No, no, we’ll go,” Roberts says, convincing Tott to save his energy for his meeting with the survivors.
Before Tott can change his mind, Roberts scoots downstairs. Although he finds no trace of the photos, he remains calm, knowing that they have plenty of copies.
Still, it’d be nice to have the originals.
Thirteen of the 30 survivors Tott has found so far identified themselves in the photos he took at Ahlem.
Roberts returns upstairs to search for them in the living room. Soon, the pack of photos emerges from a stack of documents like a puppy rearing its head from a pile of toys. Relieved, Roberts asks his teammates to prepare to head back to the airport to pick up the Ahlem survivors.
As they drive through Sioux City’s rusty downtown, they see the empty shell of the Swift meatpacking plant, where Tott spent his working life as a foreman. They wonder if Lucjan Barr or Henry Shery will identify themselves in his photos.
They know Tott feels optimistic about this prospect. Since he started his search in 1995, he’s been batting 0.433 – 13 of the 30 survivors he found so far identified themselves in his pictures. He hopes to add Barr, an electrical engineer from Tel Aviv, and Shery, a retiree from Manchester, N.J., who only heard of Tott 10 days earlier, to his list.
Finding a place for ahlem
Roberts learned of Tott in 2003 on the Internet. He brought the idea to his institute teammates, Co-Director Sandra Dickson, Director of Photography Hill and Research Coordinator Cara Pilson.
“I asked them to sleep on it a while,” Roberts said, “and think through all the ramifications.”
Seeing the potential and the pitfalls, they took their time deciding. They brought up several concerns. First, despite having made eight documentaries in the past two decades, they had no experience working on this kind of a project. Their previous documenatries, including their most recent, Negroes with Guns, were historical, allowing them to use archival material and know up front how the story would end. Angel of Ahlem called for an observational approach, which is inherently risky.
SURVIVOR INSTINCT: Ben Sieradski found himself on the far left in one of Vernon Tott's liberation day photos of the Ahlem Nazi labor camp, which stood outside Hannover, Germany.
“We never worked in observational format before,” Dickson said. “It was always very planned. This is grab your camera and run. It’s constantly changing.”
They also felt apprehensive about relying on a protagonist who is old and sick. Would Tott live long enough to allow them to complete the project? Would he give them enough access?
“We were worried we wouldn’t get the coverage needed,” Hill said. “But from the moment we met Vernon, there was no issue, no problem.”
Creating a documentary about the Holocaust, a crowded category in which they lacked expertise, presented other possible problems.
“Doing another World War II documentary, we weren’t sure what we were adding,” Hill said. “I thought this might be a hard sell. The average American viewer has seen so many movies about this.”
Tott solved this problem for them, too. “We realized that this isn’t just about the Holocaust,” Hill said. “It’s about Vernon and his quest to reunite with survivors.”
Tott embarked on his mission a decade ago after reading a letter in the 84th Infantry’s newsletter from Ahlem survivor Ben Sieradski seeking photos taken after liberation. Clutching The Railsplitter, Tott dug up the photos from an old shoebox in his basement, contacted the Berkeley retiree and started an unlikely partnership.
“They’re an odd couple,” Roberts said. “Vernon is an Iowa gentile who hasn’t been around many Jews in his life; Ben is a sophisticated Jewish engineer. They came from completely different worlds, but they became very close friends. It was something to watch. We thought, That’s what makes for good documentaries, good characters.”
It’s the frozen faces immortalized by Tott’s Kodak, however, that distinguish this story, noted Wilgoren, whose article ran in the Sunday NYT on Feb. 20.
“The idea of connecting to the survivors through the photos is really powerful,” the NYT Chicago bureau chief said. “It’s just so rare to have this kind of photos. People are enchanted by them.”
Some people nonetheless questioned the institute’s choice of a topic.
“One guy I spoke with about this said to me, ‘No one is interested in the Holocaust,’ “ Roberts recalled. “I disagree. It’s the most compelling story in my lifetime. You just have to find a new way of telling it.”
In the documentary, the Ahlem survivors express deep gratitude to Tott for removing any doubts – not just the world’s, but theirs, as well – about what they experienced.
“I wasn’t quite sure that it really happened,” Ahlem survivor Sam Gottesman offers in one of the documentary’s first scenes. “When I looked in those pictures and saw myself in them I said, ‘Yes, Sam, you were there, you suffered all those things.’ “
Ahlem survivor Jack Tramiel, who donated $100,000 to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in Tott’s honor and $25,000 to the documentary, echoes the sentiment about the photos providing “proof.”
“I will never forget [Tott] for the rest of my life,” the Commodore Computer founder says in the documentary, “and my kids won’t forget him.”
Believing they captured a fresh angle in Angel of Ahlem, Roberts and his teammates plan their first theatrical release. To do so, they must convert their widescreen digital format to 35mm film, an expensive proposition that pushes the estimated budget as high as $300,000, excluding salaries.
“We want to show it in major cities that have large Jewish populations, like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago,” Roberts said. “It has international potential, as well. We want to put subtitles in German and Polish and also Hebrew, so we can show it in Israel.”
To achieve this, the team has had to invest more time and effort in fundraising than usual.
“If you can’t raise money for this project,” Roberts said, “you can’t raise money.”
In November, they flew to New York with the College’s Dean Terry Hynes and Director of Development Rebecca Hoover to hold a fundraising reception for more than 60 people, including Tott, Ahlem survivors, and alumni. Publishing consultant Amy Goldberger, TEL 1969, hosted the event, which netted about $20,000, in her Manhattan penthouse.
“It’s such a different kind of story,” Goldberger said, “than what I’m usually familiar with.”
DOING THEIR HOMEWORK : Cara Pilson conducts research for the Documentary Institute.
‘His face, I remember’
The documentary makers grew close to their subject, who saw them as far more than objective observers. For instance, when a newspaper reporter would request an interview, Tott would consult with Roberts or Dickson before giving an answer. Even the NYT set up its interview with their help.
“[The Totts] did so much for us, we felt we had to thank them,” Roberts said. “So we did as much as we could for the family.”
They located survivors, conducted research, organized the material, and paid some expenses, such as flying in Barr, his wife Ruth, and Shery. In fall 2004, they prepared to take Tott to Israel. Liebowitz put together English, Hebrew and Yiddish ads seeking leads for former Ahlem prisoners. The team geared up for a hectic trip – Barr alone indicated he could put them in touch with five survivors in the Tel Aviv area. But by January, Tott’s failing health nixed the plan.
“I wish I could go to Israel,” Tott said. “I would be on top of the world if I could go there.”
Instead, Barr and Shery came to see him. When they took their seats at the dining table alongside Tott to examine his photos, everyone else hung back, silently watching with anticipation.
“His face, I remember,” Barr said, holding up one of the photos and pointing at one of the two men pictured. “I don’t remember to whom it belongs, but his face I remember. Almost could be me.”
“To me, that’s you there,” Tott said. “I can see by the way your ear is shaped.”
“Maybe,” Barr said, “maybe.”
Barr pulled out two passport photos taken after the war. Tott held them up to the picture he took and carefully compared the ears. “Could be you,” he said.
Unconvinced, Barr shifted his attention to another picture. By the time they finished going through the photos, however, Barr changed his mind, saying he felt unsure about finding himself in any of them. Shery also came up with no match.
“It’s hard to recognize yourself,” Shery said.
As Tott voiced disappointment, Shery put it in perspective.
“Without pictures, do you think people would believe this happened?” he said. “I myself sometimes can’t believe it.”
Friday, Feb. 18
Despite moving into a hospice bed set up in his living room, “Vernon continued his search to the end,” Roberts said.
Before he died 10 days later, Tott added three more names to his list of Ahlem survivors who identified themselves in his photos.
