Leora Tec

On June 21, screening of the film ‘Defiance’, based on Nechama Tec’s book ‘Defiance: The Bielski Partisans’ was held in the museum’s Tolerance Center.  Besides Daniel Craig, who played the main character, dozens of prominent Lithuanian actors took part in the film, which tells the story of Jewish partisans and rescuers during the Second World War.

After the screening, a meeting with Leora Tec, the daughter of Nechama Tec, was held. L. Tec told the story of her mother, a Holocaust survivor, spoke about the birth of her book and shared some interesting facts about the shooting of the film. She admitted that of the views she saw on the corner street was especially moving.

 
Prior to the film screening

‘I remember a day when I turned the corner and was confronted with a narrow street, filled with extras playing the part of ghetto Jews wearing the yellow star, walking along forlornly in drab-colored clothing not saying much though they were between takes. That sight took my breath away. I have read Primo Levi and Katzetnik. I have seen Schindler’s List and Night and Fog. I have stood in the gas chambers in Auschwitz and seen the piles and piles of shoes in Majdanek and stared at the nothingness where half a million Jews were murdered in Belzec. Still it was something else to be confronted with such a sight right in front of me, living breathing, seemingly real’, recalled L. Tec. 

Photo credit: Paulius Račiūnas