PBS to air specials in commemoration of the Holocaust

Newcomer Ellie Kendrick plays Anne, a maturing teenager caught between a powerful maelstrom of family conflict and emotional growing pains within the attic, and fear of the war waging outside. Iain Glenn stars as her father, Otto Frank, and Tamsin Greig as Anne’s quiet mother, Edith. New Anne Frank production

A new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank will air as a PBS Masterpiece Classic production on WEDU from 9 to 11 p.m. on Sunday, April 11 (Holocaust Remembrance Day).

The presentation is sponsored exclusively by the Jewish Federations of North America (formerly UJC), which is supported in part by the Jewish Federation of Pinellas & Pasco Counties.

The PBS Masterpiece Classic story, adapted by screenwriter Deborah Moggach, has been touted as the “most accurate” version ever made, drawing on young Anne Frank’s own words in the diary more extensively than ever before.

The daily handwritten record chronicles the life of the young Jewish girl and her family as they hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic for several years. They were ultimately betrayed and the entire family, except for Anne’s father, died in the concentration camps. Her diary is now one of the world’s most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films, making her is one of the most renowned and most discussed victims of the Holocaust.

“(The) Federation system is honored to be a part of making this presentation available to the public,” said Joan Benstock, president of the Jewish Federation of Pinellas and Pasco Counties.

A 2008 survey found that only a quarter of American teenagers could correctly identify Hitler, which “underscores the critical role we can play in helping inform people about the Holocaust through efforts like this,” Benstock said, ”with the hope it will help reduce anti-Semitism, prejudice and bigotry throughout the world today.”

The PBS website ( www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/annefrank/index.html) has extensive information about the film and the diary, along with many related activities designed to engage diverse audiences in this material, while also introducing them to the Federation movement. The film will be streamed online for 30 days following the broadcast.

Stories from Arab Lands gets spotlight

WEDU will air the world premiere of the documentary Among the Righteous: Lost Stories From the Holocaust in Arab Lands, on Monday, April 12 at 10 p.m.

The new documentary is based on Robert Satloff ’s personal experience trying to locate an Arab, who in the face of the German and Fascist occupation of North Africa, took action to save his Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.

Satloff, Washington Institute for Near East Policy executive director, spent eight years traveling to four continents to uncover situations that could change the way Arabs view Jews, themselves, and their own history.

Over the course of his journey, Satloff not only found the Arab heroes for whom he was searching, but he also made surprising discoveries about what really happened to the half-million Jews of the Arab lands of North Africa under Nazi, Vichy and Fascist rule.

Narrated by Robert MacNeil, the documentary was produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.