The Yad Vashem Visual Centre’s Film Collection and Library, the largest Holocaust-themed film collection in the world, has now got two more of Inna Rogatchi’s short films: One Day in October. Pilgrimage to Home, and The Legacy of Light: Drama of Jewish Life in Ukraine.
Both short films are musical video-essays created by Inna Rogatchi on certain collections of her fine art photography.
One Day in October. Pilgrimage to Home features reflections by modern people on the Holocaust theme, and focuses on people in the former Soviet Union who were not able to do it previously, due to the Soviet policy on the issue denying the necessary knowledge and ignoring the tragedy of European Jewry in its chilling details. Only recently the people living in the former Soviet Union were able to face the truth, often including the truth about their own families, in all those petrifying details.
The Legacy of Light: Drama of Jewish Life in Ukraine is the result of Dr Rogatchi’s research of the places in Ukraine connected to the unparalleled history of the unparalleled family of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and also reflecting on modern-day Jewish life in the city which was established by the Russian Tsarina Ekaterina the Great as the planned third capital of her empire. The city called Ekaterinoslav had 96 synagogues and was a large Jewish centre. The father of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yitzhak Schneerson had been the chief Rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk (renamed after the Bolshevik revolution) for 39 years before he was arrested by the NKVD and sent to exile to Kazakhstan where he died in torment and poverty.
Inna Rogatchi’s family has been connected to the personal history of the Schneerson family and to the history of the large Jewish community there. Inna’s maternal great-father Meer Chigrinsky, a well-known person in the history of Ukraine, was married to the sister of Sergey Palei, the head of the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community who had been instrumental in bringing the Chassidic Rabbi, the father of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe, as the Chief Rabbi of the previously orthodox Jewish community there.
Meer Chigrinsky, due to his extraordinary diligence, was appointed by the Soviet authorities to lead the food distribution department of the large industrial city at the most daring time of catastrophic famine in Ukraine. Meer Chigrinsky was not a bolshevik, neither was he a communist, he was a menshevik and not a member of the communist party. His appointment to such a position was extraordinary and had everything to do with his stern and legendary honesty. Being master of all food in the city, he personally and his family were twice on the brink of death because of hunger at that time.
It was that man to whom Chief Rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk at that time, the father of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe addressed with his worry over possible casualties in the community due to the spreading famine. Together, Rabbi Yitzhak Schneerson and Meer Chigrinsky came up with the plan to save the 50 thousand Jewish people of Dnepropetrovsk. The community had applied to the city authorities with a request to receive flour regularly for baking matzot for the community members. The request had been granted thanks to Inna Rogatchi’s great-grandfather. Due to that heroic deed, not a single member of the Jewish community died because of famine during that most daring of times for people in Ukraine. Rebbetzin Chaya-Mushka Schneerson, the wife of Rabbi Yizthak Scheerson and mother of the 7th Lubavitch Rebbe wrote about this in her very well-known memoir, as well.
Inna’s short film, which is an art musical essay on her fine art photography collection features original places in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, connected with the Schneerson family, and includes the places connected at the same time with the Chigrinski and Paley families who played so significant a part in the Jewish history of Dnepropetrovsk and in the history of the Schneerson family.
To watch the video on YouTube, here is a link to the film:
The Rogatchi Foundation expresses its gladness over the fact that Yad Vashem has requested both of Inna Rogatchi’s short films on the Jewish history of Ukraine for their library and the collection.