Defiance: ‘A Monument to My Brother’

Film Screening
The Library takes a compelling, two-part look at the life of one of Kansas City’s dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, Gitla Doppelt, beginning Monday with a screening of the 2008 film Defiance (R). It tells the story of World War II resistance fighters who fled to the Belarussian forests and worked to protect themselves and other Jewish noncombatants from Nazi occupiers. Doppelt, a part of that group with her brothers and parents, speaks at the Plaza Branch two nights later.
Monday, April 8, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 1:33pm

Displaced from their home in Belarus during World War II, a then-teenage Gitla Doppelt and her family joined bands of forest-dwelling resistance fighters who worked to protect themselves and other Jewish noncombatants from their country’s Nazi occupiers. The story of one of those groups, led by former Polish Army corporal Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, is told in the film Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.

The Oscar-nominated movie (2008; R) is screened Monday night. The next night, Doppelt discusses its depiction of the events that came to define her life.

One of her brothers, Chiya, was killed in the fighting. Doppelt, now 91 and among an ever-smaller number of Holocaust survivors in the Kansas City area, made it through the ordeal with another brother, Israel, whom she credits with saving her life. They were separated from their parents while evading the Germans but reunited after the war.
 
Discussion with Gitla Doppelt
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Program: 6:30 p.m.
Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

Details / RSVP