“THREE MINUTES IN POLAND”: RESCUING INDIVIDUAL STORIES; RETRIEVING COMMUNAL PASTS || RESOURCE LIST

#TJHTalks21 & Warsaw Jewish Film Festival

“THREE MINUTES IN POLAND”: RESCUING INDIVIDUAL STORIES; RETRIEVING COMMUNAL PASTS

Guest Speakers:
Glenn Kurtz and Roberta Grossman

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

When Professor Glenn Kurtz first came across an inconspicuous 16mm reel in his parents’ Florida home, he did not anticipate that it would lead to him writing a bestselling book and inspire a movie, which will debut in 2022. The 3-minute film, captured during his grandfather’s European trip in 1938, shows the pre-war city of Nasielsk in central Poland. Though a relatively small shtetl, the city was home to 3000 Jews and was an important hub of Jewish culture in the region. After the war, only 80 are said to have survived.

Together with director Roberta Grossman, Professor Kurtz will discuss the impact such family movies have on historical research and the understanding of both our personal and communal pasts.

Glenn Kurtz is a 2019-2021 Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, Orange, CA, and the recipient of a 2016-2017 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. A graduate of Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music, he holds a Ph.D from Stanford University. He has taught at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and is currently on the faculty at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Glenn is the author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014), which was named a “Best Book of 2014” by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. The Los Angeles Times called the book “breathtaking,” and it has received high critical praise in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications.

Roberta Grossman is an internationally acclaimed writer, director, producer, and member of the Academy’s Documentary branch. Through insightful and visually captivating movies, she explores important issues of Jewish history and social justice. Roberta’s credits include, among others, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh (2008) “Hava Nagila: The Movie,”(2012) and “Above and Beyond” (2015) and “Allred” (2018). Her 2018 movie, “Who Will Write Our History”–executive produced by Nancy Spielberg–became an international box office hit in the documentary genre. In 2020, Roberta Grossman received the Taube Philanthropies Jewish Peoplehood Award for her contributions to Jewish culture and heritage.

The Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, now celebrating its 19th year, is the first and largest Jewish Film Festival in Poland and Eastern Europe. Since its inception in 2003, the Festival has premiered some of the finest international films dedicated to exploring Jewish culture, history, and contemporary Jewish life around the globe. The Festival will take place November 15–21, 2021, with a spectacular program that will be streamed online and in-person. More info: www.wjff.pl

If you would like to listen to #TJHTalks with our previous guests, visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.