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Printer-Friendly ModeFilmmaker links eras with latest project
September 28, 2009 —
Where does a connection lie between the Holocaust and the Civil War? Last week, the answer was in the Ott Auditorium.
On Monday, SVSU welcomed New York City filmmaker Jake Boritt as he screened his newest documentary, Budapest to Gettysburg. The film follows Boritt’s father, Hungarian refugee Gabor Boritt, as he reconnects with his past – a time the elder Boritt preferred remain buried in the archives of history.
A world-renowned historian of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Gabor Boritt is an expert on some of the bloodiest times in American history. Yet he claimed no expertise in the area of his war-torn childhood, a time characterized by Nazi and Communist tyranny in the 1940s and ‘50s.
Gabor Boritt is not one to admit he had a hard life growing up. He is a forward-looking man, his son said. But this didn’t stop Jake Boritt from convincing his father to revisit Hungary and let the camera tell his story.
By creating the documentary, “I didn’t convince my father his childhood was terrible,” Jake Boritt said, “although he thought I wanted to.”
Born in Budapest in 1940, Gabor Boritt survived the Holocaust and joined the Hungarian Revolution at 16 to oppose the Soviet Union’s oppression. He fled Hungary with his sister in 1956, reaching American soil in April 1957.
An encounter with a booklet of Lincoln’s writings during the immigrant’s quest to learn English sparked what would grow into a passion for teaching American Civil War history. He moved to Gettysburg in 1981, raised a family and taught with a doctorate in history at Gettysburg College for more than 25 years.
In the film, Gabor Boritt speaks of a comfortable life he created in America and a past he did not want to be dragged back into.
“It was a lot of convincing,” his son said. “He’s a very busy man … but like he said in the letter he wrote me, you do things for a son that you don’t do for anyone else.”
As director, producer, editor and cinematographer, Jake Boritt walked the streets of Budapest with his father and aunt, exploring sites that stirred some vivid memories for the siblings.
Throughout the World War II German occupation, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported and murdered in concentration camps.
With the aid of a Hungarian historian, Gabor Boritt begins to realize the magnitude of the genocide, something he admits he didn’t fully comprehend before.
He visits the train station where his grandfather’s family was deported to Auschwitz and the area where his father was known to rescue Jews from similar fates. A parallel unfolds as Gabor Boritt, too, seeks information about his own father’s hazy past.
Watching his father react to uncovering dark memories wasn’t always easy on Jake Boritt’s side of the camera.
“There were times when I was filming and I was just like, ‘I’m the cause of this,’” he said. “You’re playing two roles: the son and the filmmaker. You try to balance the two, but it’s hard.”
From Holocaust memorials to the site where Hungarian revolutionists tore down an 80-foot bronze Stalin monument in 1956, Jake Boritt sends his father back in time, juxtaposing the violent images of Gabor Boritt’s past with those of the American history he knows so well.
Despite early misgivings, Jake Boritt said his father gave the film the ultimate seal of approval: masterpiece.
A recent medical procedure prevented Gabor Boritt from coming to Saginaw as a Dow Visiting Scholar. Civil War historian Matthew Pinkser visited along with Jake Boritt and delivered the lecture “Abraham Lincoln: Private Man, Public Leader” the following night.
Jake Boritt’s other films include Adams County USA, Cooking to Live (filmed at a U.N. refugee camp on the Somali border) and Harlem 11-4: Obama Wins. He is presently completing 759: Boy Scouts of Harlem. More information is available online by Clicking Here and on Facebook.
A storyteller by nature, the filmmaker conveyed his strategy for success during a partial screening for communication professor Robert Drew’s independent film class.
“You have to want to tell the story,” Jake Boritt said. “You have to be passionate about it.”
