{"id":94239,"date":"2022-04-08T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=94239"},"modified":"2022-04-02T07:48:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-02T05:48:51","slug":"08-00-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=94239","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Actor Michael Aloni on \u2018Jewish Revenge\u2019 at US Premiere of \u2018Plan A\u2019 Film About Holocaust Survivors\u2019 Plot Against Germans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Israeli Actor Michael Aloni on \u2018Jewish Revenge\u2019 at US Premiere of \u2018Plan A\u2019 Film About Holocaust Survivors\u2019 Plot Against Germans<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Shiryn Ghermezian<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Israeli actor Michael Aloni (center) speaking during a panel discussion with \u201cPlan A\u201d filmmakers and Yoav and Doron Paz and chief historian of Yad Vashem Dina Porat at the film\u2019s US premiere on March 31, 2022. Photo: The Algemeiner<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli actor Michael Aloni and the filmmakers behind his post-World War II-era film \u201cPlan A\u201d discussed moral justice, revenge and antisemitism during the movie\u2019s US premiere in New York City on Thursday night.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlan A\u201d is based on the true story of young Holocaust survivors and Jewish vigilantes in 1945 who formed a group called Nakam, which is the Hebrew word for revenge. They plotted to avenge the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by killing 6 million Germans, in a scheme \u2014 called Plan A \u2014 to poison the country\u2019s drinking water.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aloni stars as Michael, a member of Israel\u2019s Haganah \u2014 the main Zionist paramilitary organization of Jews in pre-state Israel \u2014 who attempts to stop Nakam before they carry out their plan. The film was written and directed by Israeli brothers Yoav and Doron Paz.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a panel discussion after the film\u2019s screening on Thursday night at The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center, Aloni said his character was a way to honor to his grandfather, who was a partisan in Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy own personal family history dates back to kind of exactly the same point,\u201d he explained. \u201cMy mom, when she watched this movie, she was very excited and brought up in tears because for her its kind of like a way to glorify the memory of my grandfather. He was a partisan in Poland that stayed after the war and was also a professor for international law. He was a representative in the Nuremberg Trials where he received the SS officers, recognized each and every one of them, and sat through all the trials.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Doron said he and Yoav conceived of the idea for the film after learning about a friend\u2019s grandfather who, after surviving the Holocaust, located the neighbor that informed the Nazis about him and his family \u2014 and then killed him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMe and Yoav thought about the story and started thinking, \u2018Wow this is an amazing personal revenge story,’\u201d Doron said. \u201cOnce we started diving into the research and read about the revenge side of the Holocaust, we encountered the story about Plan A and this blew our mind because it wasn\u2019t a personal revenge story, it was a national revenge story. And then on the spot, me and Yoav decided this is going to be our next movie.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The head of Nakam, Abba Kovner, who later became a poet laureate, traveled to pre-state Israel to obtain poison for the group\u2019s scheme. He managed to get the poison from brothers Aharon and Efram Katzir, the latter of whom went on later in life to become the fourth president of Israel, said Yad Vashem\u2019s chief historian Dina Porat, who also participated in Thursday\u2019s panel discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Porat, who previously published a book dedicated to Kovner and has another coming out later this year about Nakam, said the group of Jewish vigilantes was comprised of 50 men and women, and that she knew and interviewed 35 of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Paz brothers also interviewed some of the Jewish avengers for \u201cPlan A,\u201d discussing their moral choices, the desire for justice and lust for vengeance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat interested us was the psychological aspect,\u201d said Doron. \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t know what I would chose 70 years ago if I was a hot-blooded young man, 20-something-years-old, who lost everyone around me. But I think as storytellers, that\u2019s what intrigued us in this story. Just to throw the question out there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yoav said the filmmakers were very careful in how they tackled the \u201cdelicate subject\u201d of revenge on screen, and that they wanted audiences to understand why Nakam did what they did. He said, \u201cSome people think this film should\u2019ve never been made and others think it was an important one that needs to spread out around the world. It\u2019s a discussion and we wanted to raise this discussion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Aloni instead spoke to the audience about the will to survive being stronger than the will to carry out revenge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis story of the Jewish revenge is the very untold story that so many people are not aware of,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know the stories of people who tried to save their lives, resist the Nazis and fought against them, and prisoners who fought in their own minds how to survive in the camps. The amount of strength of life that you need to put yourself in and to be strong in your imagination to survive those death camps is enormous. It\u2019s stronger than the force of revenge, to stay alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlan A\u201d was filmed in Ukraine and Yoav praised the amazing Ukrainian crew that helped with the film. He also commented on the country suffering under Russia\u2019s ongoing invasion and said, \u201cWe see history repeating itself. It\u2019s really mind-blowing to see this footage on the news, looking like something out of World War II.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were shooting and scouting for locations [in Ukraine], it was so difficult to find places that look like out of a war and now unfortunately it just keeps repeating itself,\u201d Yoaz said. \u201cOf course in Israel it\u2019s an ongoing conflict zone that never ends and all these conflicts keep raising moral questions about revenge: what does it mean to take revenge? What good will it take you if you walk this path? And so on. So this subject is still relevant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Aloni added, \u201cHate and hatred will always be in this world, and antisemitism still exists and we need to still fight it. And we have to stand for equality and peace, and to push those shadows away from us. It\u2019s still a mission.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlan A\u201d has already been screened in Germany, where Doron explained that the reaction from the audience \u201cwas very serious and emotional.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Israeli Actor Michael Aloni on \u2018Jewish Revenge\u2019 at US Premiere of \u2018Plan A\u2019 Film About Holocaust Survivors\u2019 Plot Against Germans Shiryn Ghermezian Israeli actor Michael Aloni (center) speaking during a panel discussion with \u201cPlan A\u201d filmmakers and Yoav and Doron Paz and chief historian of Yad Vashem Dina Porat at the film\u2019s US premiere on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94239"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94253,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94239\/revisions\/94253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}