We’ve all heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but most people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi barbarism was. Instead, it’s widely believed “Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter.”  Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back provides a much-needed corrective to this myth of Jewish passivity. There were uprisings in ghettos large and small, rebellions in death camps, and thousands of Jews fought Nazis in the forests. Everywhere in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the Nazis.

Watch a trailer HERE.

This program will feature a post-screening conversation and Q&A with journalist Tom Teicholz, writer/director Paula Apsell, and executive producer of the film Michael Berenbaum--presented in partnership with American Jewish University.

Paula S. Apsell got her start in broadcasting at WGBH Boston. Within a year, she found her way to WGBH Radio, where she developed the award-winning children’s drama series, The Spider’s Web, and later became a radio news producer. In 1975, she joined WGBH’s NOVA, a science documentary series that has set the standard for science programming on television, producing documentaries on subjects as varied as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and aviation safety. In 1985, she was asked to take over the reins at NOVA where she served as Senior Executive Producer and Director of the WGBH Science Unit for 33 years, building NOVA into the most popular science series on American television and a highly respected science site online. During Apsell’s tenure, NOVA won every major broadcasting award, most many times over, including the Emmy; the Peabody; the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism award; the duPont-Columbia University Gold and Silver Batons; and an Academy Award nomination for Special Effects. Apsell has been recognized with numerous individual awards for her work, including the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Emmy of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the first science journalist to be so honored. She has served on the board of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; the Brandeis University Sciences Advisory Committee; the International Documentary Association, and the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers. She stepped down from NOVA in 2019 and she founded Leading Edge Productions to make documentaries of scientific, cultural, and historical importance.

Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as deputy director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute. Berenbaum played a leading role in the creation of the USHMM and the content of its permanent exhibition. From 1997 to 1999, he served as president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and subsequently (and currently) as Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, located at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California. 

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