"Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film" - Talk by Author Glenn Kurtz

All are invited to a free, illustrated talk by Glenn Kurtz, who will present the story that unfolds in his award-winning book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film on Wednesday, May 18 at 7:00 P.M. This event, funded by a generous grant from the Woods Hole Foundation, will take place at Falmouth Jewish Congregation's Blanche & Joel D. Seifer Community Center, 7 Hatchville Road, which is accessible to all. Reservations are not necessary, but information can be found at www.falmouthjewish.org or by calling 508-540-0602.

Selected as one of the "Best Books of 2014" by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio and Honorable Mention Winner of the Kulczycki Book Prize

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Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community—an entire culture—annihilated in the Holocaust.

Three Minutes in Poland traces author Kurtz's four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather’s haunting images. His search took him across the United States, to Canada, England, Poland and Israel, to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, he encountered seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy.

Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz’s home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. Pursuing the significance of this brief film became a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival.

Kurtz brings to life both the subject of the film -- the small town in Poland and its inhabitants and the fascinating and moving story of his detective work to discover the meaning of this family treasure that he has now shared with the world. You will not want to miss this unforgettable presentation.

Falmouth Jewish Congregation is a Reform congregation, members of the Union for Reform Judaism, serving the Upper Cape and beyond with Jewish life, worship, educational and cultural programs, and engagement in social justice. Like us on Facebook or visit our website at www.falmouthjewish.org to learn more.