Rudolph Caplan was staying overnight in an infirmary on the night after Kristallnacht in November 1938 when Nazis raided his school and shipped all the male students over 18 to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Caplan’s classmates were released a month later, after signing a pledge to leave Germany. All 150 of the students, including Caplan, were able to flee the country in August 1939, a month before the beginning of World War II.
Caplan had entered the school, Gross-Breesen, when it was founded on a secluded farm in 1936 by the Reichsvertretung der Deutscher Juden (Organization of German Jews).
“The original goal was not to shelter the students from physical harm, it was to give them a chance to start a new life,” said Rudolph’s son Michael Caplan. “It was a place to train the students to start a new society in an as-yet undetermined other country. The Nazis were very supportive of it initially because they wanted to encourage the Jews to leave Germany.”
Michael’s documentary about his father’s experience at Gross-Breesen, “Stones from the Soil,” is set to play on PBS national this May.
After Rudolph’s death seven years ago, Michael resolved to make a narrative film based on the story. He eventually hired New York cameraman John Kelleran to shoot Betacam footage of research interviews he conducted at a Gross Breesen reunion in the Catskills.
“I’m sitting there listening to the people and looking at the visuals, and I thought, ‘who are you kidding, this is a documentary,'” Caplan recalled. “The people were such interesting characters, so compelling, energetic and articulate.”
In 2002 Caplan went to the site of the school, in what is now Poland, with Berlin-based camerawoman Carolina Brandes, who had been his film student at Columbia College. The castle that had been the center of the school was undergoing renovation, and the architect was on site.
“He was pretty flipped out when this Jewish- American filmmaker and this German camerawoman and a Polish interpreter showed up out of nowhere with photos of the castle from the 1930’s,” Caplan said. “A wealthy Polish entrepreneur bought the castle and it’s going to be his private residence. When you get into a post-Communist situation, who has access to which property is hard to pin down.”
“For me it was pretty overwhelming,” Caplan continued. “This was a formative place for my father and these other teenagers, and it was also a place that saved their lives. I really felt like I was walking in their footsteps. I realized that the time my dad was on the farm had such a huge impact on him that much of my viewpoint of the world that he passed on to me was what he learned during that time.
“It’s a very tough but enlightened view that stressed self-awareness and a duty to others. A 90-year-old gentleman I interviewed in Berlin summed it up when he said ‘Life is important ? it’s not always beautiful, but it’s important.'”
Caplan paid the $30,000 cash budget with faculty development grants from Columbia, individual donations, and his own savings. He utilized an estimated $50,000 in in-kind donations.
In June 2003 Caplan and editor Rebecca Rose brought a fine cut to a PBS mentorship session arranged by AIVF in New York. They met PBS programming VP Gustavo Sagastume, who offered the film a slot on PBS Plus, a national a la carte programming bundle from which PBS affiliates can choose shows. Caplan is holding out for a slot on the national PBS doc series “POV,” which runs in most major markets and would guarantee the film broad penetration.
“I’m waiting to hear back from ‘POV’ by the end of January,” Caplan explained. “As of two weeks ago, Sagastume said if it doesn’t go on ‘POV’ it would show in May as part of PBS Plus, in which case I would do a grassroots campaign to get individuals in each market to request the film,” Caplan explained.
Rose cut “Stones from the Soil” on Final Cut Pro in her home and at Caplan’s office. Cutters’ Sol FX did color correction. “It blows me away that a broadcast- ready film can now be shot on DV and edited on final cut, provided it gets a good color correction,” Caplan marveled.
Caplan got his MFA in Radio, Television and Film from Northwestern University. He produced the independent narrative features “Peoria Babylon,” “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me,” and “The Windy City.”
Caplan will speak at the IFP/Chicago membership meeting on documentary distribution, 6 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Old State of Illinois Building, 160 N. LaSalle; $5, IFP members free.
Reach Caplan at montrosepictures@aol.com.
? by Ed M. Koziarski, edk@homesickblues.com
