We did it!
Friends,
Something extraordinary happened last week which brought to an end a barely believable episode of my life. At a small court hearing the Republic of Lithuania finally surrendered to the truth, unambiguously declaring that Jonas Noreika, their matinee idol Jew-murdering national hero, was indeed a holocaust perpetrator and should not be honoured. Paragraph three says it all. The statues and shrines are coming down.
I can still barely believe it. The campaign for Holocaust truth in Lithuania that totally dominated three years of my life, is over. And against impossible odds, we’ve won. The Truth has won.
How on earth did all this happen? It would take a book and a half to tell you everything that led to the making of J’Accuse! but let’s fast forward to that autumn day in 2020 when I was feeding my chickens on my Little Farm and decided there and then, in a bolt of rage after days of obsessive brooding, that the insult of Noreika was just bloody unacceptable. That I had to resist it with every bit of strength I had. That I had to do my personal best to stop the lying bastards and their Holocaust slanders. And there in the chicken coop I made a promise – to myself, my murdered family (scores of them), and to Gd – that I would fight them with the only weapon I possessed, my ability to make a film that would expose their lies.
I was 67. I hadn’t made a serious documentary film for over 25 years. I had no contacts or equipment. Unlike in my pampered professional past (BBC mostly, when it was worth something) I would have to do everything myself – writing, research, filming, audio mixing, editing, compliance, post-production. I had no CV, no money, no equipment and no backers. I no longer knew the software or technologies needed. I had not yet met Grant Cochin and Silvia Foti (who I already knew would be the protagonists of my film) so I had still to win their trust, and of course honour it. Covid had just sealed off the world. And everywhere, especially in Eastern Europe, the tide of Holocaust revisionism and distortion was gaining pace and credibility.
So it began. Every day yielded 100 urgent tasks and none of them was enjoyable. Badgering total strangers (even worse, friends!) for money; learning complex editing software; speaking to any audience, any time, anywhere on earth; cancelling every other project in my life; working my way through hours of related footage and archive; obsessing with narrative detail, every minute of the wakeful day; and, worst of all, descending every night into the black heart of the LIthuanian Holocaust with its infinite tortures, humiliations and cruelties. Any Holocaust journey takes something of your soul: this brought me, via my murdered family, to its epicentre. It changes you, forever.
So for months on end, from dawn to midnight (because most of the slog was based in America) I hustled. For money, for favours, for introductions, for information, for knowledge, for contacts, for photos, for ideas. I did zooms, read books and articles, watched libraries of videos and interviews and wrote scores of articles, scripts, ideas, treatments and letters. And for the most part, each day brought a different kind of failure. I was getting nowhere.
But you know what the weirdest thing is? I couldn’t stop. It’s weird because I am very much a lazy kind of guy. I prefer holidays to work. I love retirement. I have zero ambition. But every day became a fifteen hour marathon and I swallowed it. Nothing else mattered.
What also drove me on was the warmth, integrity and moral example of Silvia and Grant. From the earliest days they invited me in, not expecting much, I think, but hoping for something. Because out there in the world, as they knew only too well, nobody was listening. Certainly not Lithuanians, but Jews neither. Especially important Jews, and emphatically important Jews who were in the Holocaust industry (except the MOT in LA – great guys!). Everyone, it seemed to me, had become habituated to the status quo, that cosy entente of elaborate manners, unwritten lines that couldn’t be crossed, inane declarations and deceitful intellectual compromises.
So when I called, emailed, texted and rudely knocked on doors few people wanted to hear about my film. Most were embarrassed and some even affronted by my passion and forthrightness. Why rock the boat? Why bring this up now? There are bigger problems! Why be so damned rude to people? Let it lie, Michael, let it lie. And go for for a walk, you look terrible and you’ll feel better. And so on.
No thanks. Let me quickly explain why. Every Jew that was murdered in Lithuania was first humiliated. By starvation, rape, torture, robbery and murder. The official hero worship of men like Noreika, and the deliberate lies his reputation depends on, continues this humiliation. It declares that Jewish life still has no value. It means the Holocaust has ceased to have moral meaning. I explain all this, a dozen times a day, and invariably get that shrug of Jewish pragmatism. All of which makes me even more determined.
My only option is to make a noise, and I did. I did this principally by starting fights. Fights with LIthuanians (even nice ones who simply did not understand the importance of the hero worship of Noreika and holocaust distortion) and fights with Jews (lots of them). Fights with Holocaust organisations and their phlegmatic ‘experts’. Fights with famous and minor museums and academics and anyone else who tried to defend this intolerable status quo. Fights with Important Rabbis who seemed entirely disinterested in this scandal, and fights with diplomatic staff and antisemitic trolls wherever the sobs raised their thick heads.
As a human being, of course, I changed. There was no room any more for anything but Lithuania; even the sweet little stories about life on my little farm that I so loved to write had to go. I became the opposite of the person I think of as me: a mad-eyed provocateur, spoiling for a fight, indifferent to insult and threat and reluctant to give even an inch to fashionable and sometimes intelligent pragmatism (because yes, the insult of Noreika is that clear cut and defining). To this day I am embarrassed by some of my choices (gatecrashing a FB discussion on Kaunas’s road repairs to pick fights with bemused Lithuanian road drainage enthusiasts, for example). But there was no alternative. If we didn’t make a loud, boorish, bellicose noise, nobody would hear a word we had to say. And the liars would win.
Leaving aside my obsessional nature I had three important things in my favour. Firstly and most importantly I had a compelling story that told an important truth. Secondly, I had my online shtetl of Zimbabwean and South African Litvaks who had the same family story in their hearts and this, I would discover, was to become an unimaginably powerful network. And finally, most importantly, I had the honour of telling the astounding stories of Sylvia and Grant, two amazing people I have come to know and love.
J’Accuse! succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. It won about 150 awards and nominations at film festivals across the world, I think more than any other in 2023. It inspired global discussions and diplomatic warnings at the highest levels. And all of this without a single dollar spent on marketing. Because who needs marketing when you’ve got the South Africa/Zimbabwe shtetl?
The shtetl was conscripted in January 2023 when the South African Jewish Report, offered to run J’Accuse! on the SAJR website. We expected maybe 6000 viewers. In fact, there were over 100,000, from all over the world. After 80 years of silence, our community was at last talking about Lithuania. And boy, can we talk. After that, it just caught fire.
Perhaps the most beautiful reward for me personally has been the responses of so many viewers. I have met so many lovely people, both online and in person during my tours and presentations on five continents. These people, many of whom knew my parents and sometimes even my grandparents, told me the film had opened up their own attic of family memory which our brave grandparents had locked up precisely so we could forget – or better still, never know – and get on with life! But we needed to know, of course and I think J’Accuse! has closed that circle and enabled both personal and communal expressions of that profound grief and anger we too had locked away. It also offered a dignified and positive response: a demand for retrospective honour by forcing Lithuania to tell the truth.
Our community, scattered across the globe, took this campaign and made it their own. These amazing people, very often women, as extraordinary as they are ordinary, did everything. They are the people who became my producers, fundraisers, script advisers, funders, editorial advisers, focus groups, distributors, researchers, archivists, ethics advisers, tour organisers and PR experts. They did it for nothing, out of a sense of duty and love, and they changed the world. I would love to mention names but in case I forget even one beautiful soul who helped me (and there were so many) I won’t. But you know who you are, and you have my love and gratitude.
My friends, we did it!