Traces Media Kit

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DECEMBER 14, 2023
With incidents of antisemitism again on the rise and violence against Israel, many community leaders in Jacksonville are asking: How do we learn from history to build a better community?

Stacey Goldring believes the answer lies in storytelling. Goldring is a former journalist and the founder of Searching for Identity, a nonprofit organization that captures and tells the stories of Holocaust survivors and their children through film.

A few years ago, Stacey had a realization: with each year that passes, there are fewer Holocaust survivors living to tell their stories. At the same time, their stories are living on in the memories of their children—the second generation.

The Community Foundation was an early investor in the project that became “Traces,” a one-hour documentary that aired on PBS in early 2023 and is now traveling the film festival circuit, with the latest screening confirmed at the Berlin Film Festival, striking the very heart of this difficult history. Goldring’s goal is for 6 million people to see the film, the same number of European Jews who were killed by Nazi Germany.

Since the January 2023 Traces premiere, Searching for Identity’s goal is to develop educational materials, film festival attendance, translations and a behind-the-scenes Making of Traces film. Also in the development phase is another survival documentary, featuring a local family with a miraculous story.

This fall, Searching for Identity will introduce a second- and third-gen support group.

All these projects are supported by underwriting, grants and memberships garnered from Searching for Identity’s LiterARTure Cultural Arts Series, Chapter Endnotes Book Discussions and Searching for Identity Books and Writing Journals.

The Community Foundation made two presidential grants, totaling $8,000, in 2021 and 2022 to help Goldring with her start-up costs and provided invaluable advice as Goldring embarked on the project, with support that allowed Searching for Identity to build the case for both individual donors and institutional funders to invest in the film.

Even more, The Community Foundation’s network of donors embraced the work, including Cindy Edelman, Lisa Landwirth Ullmann and John Taylor, who have volunteered their time and talent to board service and the success of the work.

“It is more important than ever, it is vital, it is critical that we narrate our own stories,” Goldring said. “We must take control and tell the truth, so that these
stories of resilience will be remembered for no one to deny.”

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Bonnie Hardy has a story to tell — as part of dying generation. It’s a story of survival of her Jewish family, her history and the impact it’s had on her life.

The story centers on her grandparents, who were killed in Auschwitz, a concentration camp, and her mother who escaped to London, England, where she lived, married and gave birth to Hardy.

Friday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hardy’s story, as told by author Stacey Goldring, will appear in a documentary film called “Traces, Voices of the Second Generation” premiering Saturday in Jacksonville.

“It’s so important because my grandparents died. Were murdered,” Hardy said in an interview. “You can’t wrap your head around it. You just really can’t understand the magnitude, the evilness. You can’t.”

Hardy says there is another reason to get this message out now.

“I think living in Jacksonville, Florida, with all the antisemitic actions that have been occurring in just the last six months,” Hardy said. “And all the murders that have occurred, like in synagogues, or in grocery stores, wherever it may, we are actually very frightened now. So this, this cannot be forgotten. We must let future generations know.”

Hardy, like many family members of survivors, says the pain of what happened to her loved ones is something that they too carry on in life today. She told us about her mother — of what she knows. But she never really talked to her mother about how she escaped and the loss of her mother’s immediate family, but she knew her mother was troubled.

“No. 1 Impact was the depression,” she said. “You know, the amazing, phenomenal depression. You lost your parents and your siblings. They were murdered. You were ousted from your home. You literally went with the clothes on your back.”

And the impact it had on Hardy’s life is also something she wants future generations to know. That’s why she says the film is important.

I asked Hardy, if given the chance, what she would want to tell her mother today.

“Oh, gosh. That’s really — I tell her every day how much I love her, how much I miss her, how much I’m so grateful for what she gave to me having gone through what she had gone through. I mean, she really was a loving, loving person. And she, it was very difficult for her,” Hardy said.

Hardy hadn’t yet seen the film and plans to attend with friends. She hopes that its impact will be felt by many.

You can experience the story for yourself at the Wilson Center for the Arts at the FSCJ campus on the Southside. The event is free, but it’s suggested that you make a reservation
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jim Piggott

Read | Mark Woods: This projection comes from the children of Holocaust survivors

Growing up in St. Louis, Helen Meatte always had a sense her parents were different from her friends' parents.

While some of it was easy to quantify — her parents had “funny accents” — some of it was harder to define and maybe only truly understood decades later when Meatte, after retiring as an art and history teacher at The Bolles School, joined a writer’s workshop for the children of Holocaust survivors.

“They were also very different in terms of their fragility, especially my mother,” she said.

Leo Merin and Lea Ryba both managed to escape Europe, make it to America, meet each other and start a new life.

That’s the trite expression we often use to describe what immigrants in general do, what Holocaust survivors in particular do. Start a new life.

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But starting a new life doesn’t mean the old one instantly ends. In many ways, both intentional and unintentional, it lingers for generations.
A childhood photo of Helen Meatte with her parents, Lea Ryba and Leo Merin. Meatte is one of 19 children of Holocaust survivors featured in "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation," a documentary that premieres Saturday, January 28, at the Wilson Center of the Arts on the FSCJ-South Campus.

What was it like to grow up as a child of Holocaust survivors? How were “second-generation survivors” affected by what their parents lived through? What should we all take from this today?

When Stacey Goldring started a writer’s workshop in 2013, those were the core questions. In the last 10 years, they’ve only become more timely.

On Saturday evening — two weeks after a giant swastika and cross were projected onto a downtown building in Jacksonville — a documentary film produced by Goldring will be shown at FSCJ-South Campus in commemoration of UN Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Traces, Voices of the Second Generation” follows 19 children of Holocaust survivors telling not only their parents’ stories — stories those parents often were reluctant to share — but also explaining how one of history’s darkest chapters affected the “second-generation survivors.”

Helen Meatte, now 73, is one of those 19.
The 'lucky' ones

Her father, Leo, was from Hanover, Germany. In 1939, he owned a candy shop there.

But he decided to leave that business and flee the country not long after Kristallnacht, the two days in 1938 of violence and destruction of Jewish-owned businesses, synagogues and homes that left streets littered with shattered glass.

“My father came to the decision that he didn’t have a future there,” Meatte said. “He was one of the lucky ones. And I use quotation marks on the word ‘lucky.’”

At the time, the United States had strict quotas on how many Jews it was allowing to enter the country. Signing the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act, President Calvin Coolidge had said, “America must remain American.” In 1939, more than 300,000 Germans applied for U.S. visas and about 20,000 were approved.

But her father’s parents wrote to a relative in Chicago who was able to sponsor him. He arrived in New York City and got a job as a pattern cutter in the garment district. One year to the date after his arrival, he was drafted into the Army.

He would say it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. In the middle of the Depression, he had a roof over his head and three meals a day. He learned English. And when he got out of the Army, he was eligible for the G.I. Bill, received a low-interest loan and started a business in St. Louis, a lady’s ready-to-wear shop.
Helen Meatte is one of 19 children of Holocaust survivors featured in "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation," a documentary that premieres Saturday, January 28, at the Wilson Center of the Arts on the FSCJ-South Campus.

“So he loved America,” Meatte said. “I couldn’t say anything negative about the United States in front of him. He wasn’t going to hear it.”

When he left Germany, he left his parents and three siblings, two brothers and a sister. One of his brothers escaped to the Netherlands, and successfully avoided the Nazis. But both of his parents and his other two siblings ended up in Auschwitz. Only his sister — Meatte’s aunt — managed to survive.

“She spoke multiple languages and that probably saved her life,” Meatte said.

She was out in a field, dumping human waste, when she heard an officer say they needed the numbers — not the names, the numbers — of anyone who had secretarial skills and could speak German. She could do both. So she was able to move from the typical barracks, places with such unsanitary conditions that many prisoners died from disease, to something slightly better.

After also surviving the winter “death march” to Ravensbruck, she ended up in a displaced persons camp. That’s where she met Lea — the woman whom, after they both ended up in the United States, she introduced to her brother. Leo and Lea had two children, Helen and Seymour.
'Passing' as Christian

Helen’s mother had her own Holocaust survival story. She grew up in a small town in Poland and had been married to a young man from that village. As the Germans invaded Poland, he was conscripted. Before heading to the frontlines and being killed, he had the foresight to use Lea’s appearance — she was blonde and blue-eyed — to help obtain false papers. Instead of identifying her as Jewish, the papers said she was Christian.

She ended up working in factories, passing as Christian throughout the war.

“I have to assume that my mother lived every day in fear that her true identity would be revealed,” Meatte said.

She has to assume this partly because her mother died when she was 12, and partly because her parents and her aunt — the one who introduced her parents — never talked about their experiences.

Meatte tried to get her aunt to talk to her about it, but couldn’t get her to open up. So she feels fortunate that someone eventually was able to — Steven Spielberg.

In 1994, a year after “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg established the USC Shoah Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to recording interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (in Hebrew, the Shoah). One of those interviewed: Meatte's aunt.

“I think there are five tapes of her being interviewed,” she said. “So I know her story through those tapes.”
Writer and filmmaker Stacey Goldring, founder of Searching for Identity Foundation Inc. [Provided by OneJax Institute]

And while her parents named her Helen Fay after the grandmothers who died in the Holocaust — Chaya (her mother’s mother) and Feigle (her father’s mother) — she and her brother grew up knowing little of their stories.

When Meatte joined the writer’s workshop for second-generation survivors, she found quite a few common threads, starting with a lack of details about their own parents' lives — often followed by a sense that it was their role to fill those gaps in their parents' lives.

Ken Wald’s parents both grew up in small towns in Germany, survived the Holocaust, met in the United States and ended up starting a new life in Nebraska. Wald, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida, is among those featured in “Traces.”

“Our parents didn't want us to be afraid, so they really kept most of it to themselves,” Wald said. “That’s not the case for everybody. But most of us really didn't grow up knowing a lot. So we've all come together to try to figure it out and get a better feel for what had happened to them. And I do think that helps us to better understand our parents and to respect what they managed to accomplish.”

He says that one of the lessons of this project is that trauma is something that lasts a long time.

“The people who experienced it directly, of course, have memories of it and emotional reactions,” he said. “But in many cases, those are inadvertently passed on to the children.”

One of the many examples, something that Meatte sees more clearly after trying to put her stories into words: Her parents so desperately wanted her to have an idyllic childhood that it put unintended pressure on her.

“It was always unspoken, but I felt an obligation to always live this perfect existence,” she said. “I would never share anything that might have been disappointing or painful with my parents, because I knew that would be bad for them, it would break them. Because they wanted my life to be the opposite of what they experienced.”

At this point in her life — she has two grown children and four grandchildren — it isn’t just a matter of passing along stories from the Holocaust. And “Traces” isn’t just about giving voice to the children of Holocaust survivors. It’s about preventing history from repeating itself.

That’s another one of those expressions that's used so frequently that it tends to lose its impact. Like starting a new life.

But in recent years, Meatte has become increasingly wary of the echoes of history repeating itself.

She and other second-generation survivors have seen protesters at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville break into chants of “Jews will not replace us.” They’ve seen the news that a gunman, after posting an angry screed about a Pittsburgh synagogue’s support of modern-day immigrants, killed and wounded more than a dozen people there, some whom had survived the Holocaust. They’ve seen a rise in very public displays of hate, including just two weeks ago a swastika and cross projected onto the side of a building in Jacksonville.

So with all of that in mind, they hope people will see this film.

Goldring, the film’s producer, said: “I invite our community and city leaders to attend, hear these stories, and recognize that like the children and grandchildren of survivors, we all have a responsibility to educate and ensure these stories are remembered.”

mwoods@jacksonville.com

(904) 359-4212
'Traces' premiere

What: "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation," a documentary that tells the stories of children of Holocaust survivors.

When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 28

Where: Wilson Center of the Arts, FSCJ-South Campus, 11901 Beach Boulevard, Jacksonville

Cost: free, but reservations are requested and donations appreciated

More information: www.searchingforidentity.org/traces

Learn More

Local officials are mobilizing to prevent more hate speech, which seems to be on display more and more often around Jacksonville.

The Jaguars’ playoff victory on Saturday night was once again marred by hate speech.

A swastika and a cross were projected onto the CSX building downtown, the latest message in a series of white supremacist messages that have been displayed around town during high-profile Jaguars games.

Republican City Councilman Rory Diamond, District 13, says he’ll sponsor legislation that would impose penalties on parties responsible for hate speech. District 5 Republican LeAnna Gutierrez Cumber is also set to introduce legislation targeting this “awful antisemitism.”

Guests:

Rory Diamond, Jacksonville city council member.
Marian Feist, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Northeast Florida.
Claire Goforth, reporter for The Daily Dot.
Giving voice to the children of Holocaust survivors

The film "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation" gives voice to the children of Holocaust survivors as they bring to light their personal stories.

The resilient “second generation survivors” share their parents’ remarkable accounts of surviving history’s darkest evils. They reveal how the Holocaust affected their lives through its generational and inherited effects.

Stacey Goldring, filmmaker and founder of Searching for Identity, produced "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation" to inspire all of us to join the resilient “second generation survivors” and ensure these stories and their influence on the next generation are remembered.

Guests:

Stacey Goldring, filmmaker and founder of Searching for Identity.
Isaac Brown, director of "Traces, Voices of the Second Generation."

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 16, 2023 –
Traces, Voices of the Second Generation gives voice to the children of Holocaust survivors as they bring to light their personal stories. The resilient "second-generation survivors" share their parents' remarkable accounts of surviving history's darkest evils. They reveal how the Holocaust impacted their lives through its generational and inherited effects. Filmmaker and Founder of Searching For Identity, Stacey Goldring, produced Traces, Voices of the Second Generation to inspire all of us to join the resilient "second generation survivors" and ensure these stories and their influence on the next generation are remembered.

Traces, Voices of the Second Generation makes its debut on Saturday, January 28th, 2023, at 7:30 pm at the Wilson Center of the Arts, FSCJ-South Campus, 11901 Beach Blvd., Jacksonville. A Q&A session will follow the screening. Many of the cast members featured in the film will be attending the premiere. The film follows 19 “second-generation survivors” as they explain what it’s like being raised by parents traumatized by war, death, and deprivation. Many Jewish parents were struggling with overwhelming grief from the loss of their prior spouses, children, and relatives while trying to rebuild their families with the memories of atrocities fresh in their minds. Many “second-generation survivors” felt it was their role to fill those gaps in their parents’ lives and to protect them from further emotional and mental pain.

“The film is based on the stories I heard during a writer’s workshop from people whose parents survived the war,” said Stacey Goldring, Traces, Voices of the Second Generation, Producer. “Traces looks at what it was like to grow up in these families, revealing the resilience of these people. The documentary also gives the “second-generation survivors” the chance to have their opportunity to say, ‘This is what happened to me; this is my story.’” The film then presents the question of the responsibility of “second-generation survivors” and their role regarding their parents’ survivorship experience, and this inherited legacy. Traces entrusts these stories to each audience member. It also challenges the film’s viewers, now that they’ve heard these stories; what will they do?

The Traces, Voices of the Second Generation trailer can be seen here: Traces, Voices of the Second Generation. The screening of Traces, Voices of the Second Generation is a free event, but reservations are requested, and donations are appreciated. Please RSVP to www.searchingforidentity.org/traces. Premiere Partners of Traces, Voices of the Second Generation include 904ward, Florida State College Jacksonville (FSCJ), Hadassah, Holocaust Education Center, Jax PBS, a service of WJCT Public Media, George A. Smathers Libraries- University of Florida’s Price Judaica Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Jewish Federation & Foundation of Northeast Florida, StandWithUs-Southeast.

About Searching For Identity
Searching For Identity is a 501©3 non-profit organization that produces documentary films, educational videos, writing and discussion workshop, public programming and family documentaries. Searching For Identity's production team approaches storytelling through the lens of film documentarian and journalism experiences. Our inspiring films document essential issues, educate and encourage greater understanding. We motivate viewers to learn more, act, and recognize their role in ensuring the stories in our films are remembered. Our mission is to educate, empower and unite diverse communities through the arts and written word that encourages public discourse and understanding. For more information, go to www.searchingforidentity.org

Media Contact:
Charlene Shirk, CSPR
904.860.2991
charlene@charleneshirk.com