(Times of Israel) Rich Tenorio - Latvian Zanis Lipke rescued 60 Jews during World War II, sheltering them in a bunker beneath his home. Lipke is recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, and his story is told in a new Latvian historical dramatic film, "The Mover." Director Davis Simanis, a veteran Latvian filmmaker, described it as "the first feature film about the Holocaust in the Baltic states." The film shows the courage of Zanis Lipke and his wife Johanna, who live in the capital, Riga, with their three children when the Nazis invade in the summer of 1941. Of 94,000 Jews living in Latvia before WWII, all but several thousand perished in the Holocaust. Lipke personally witnessed the Jews being led to their deaths. "The main question for me in preparing the script, filming the film, is how is it possible for a person to see something inhuman happen and decide to do something," Simanis said, "and at the same time know that [doing something] could end your family, or create a certain threat to the closest people [in your life]." Lipke was an unlikely hero, a dock worker with a minor criminal record for contraband. "[He] did it...without any kind of reflection on his own benefit," Simanis said.
2019-08-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive