October 18, 2012 (REVISED October 24, 2012) Documentary Film on Jews of Hungary Subject of Dec. 10 Program

Press Contact: Audrey Fischer (202) 707-0022
Public Contact: Gail Shirazi (202) 707-9897

During World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered the deportation of all the Jewish people of Hungary. Most of them were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. Some survivors returned after the end of the war, but the Hungarian Jewish community never thrived again.

Six decades later, Gyöngyi Magò, a high-school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary, uncovered the story of the Jews that were deported from that town in the summer of 1944. She turned to filmmaker Gabor Kalman—himself a survivor of Kalocsa—to tell their story.

Kalman will deliver a lecture at the Library with clips from his film titled “There Was Once …” at noon on Monday, Dec. 10 in the Mary Pickford Theater, located on the third floor of the James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored jointly by the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, the Hebrew Language Table and the Washington Jewish Film Festival. The film is in Hungarian and English. Tickets are not required.

Kalman was 10 years old when Hitler marched into Hungary and he was forced into hiding. He survived the war, the Holocaust and Soviet occupation. His academic career was constantly interrupted by rapidly developing political events. As a university student he participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and subsequently fled Hungary for the United States. He received a bachelor’s degree in physiology from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in communications from Stanford University. He has produced and directed numerous award-winning documentary films, including “Fifteen French Architects in Los Angeles,” “We Are All One People” and “Keepers of Memory: Stories of Hidden Children.”

Kalman is also an adjunct professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and a founding member of the International Documentary Association. He created the prestigious David L. Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Awards. As a Senior Fulbright Scholar, and more recently as a Senior Fulbright Specialist, he taught at the Academy of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest, Hungary.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.

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PR 12-195
2012-10-18
ISSN 0731-3527