"In the Footsteps of Lusia" with Dr. Anat Balint

Dr. Anat Balint will present the film In the Footsteps of "Lusia," depicting the journey of the Holocaust survivor Lea Balint and her daughter back to her childhood-in-hiding in World War II-era Poland.

Lea Balint is the "mother" of those who lost their identity in the Holocaust. Based on historical research, she helped those who survived as children and lost any trace to their past to rediscover their origins and sometimes living family members. She was a child in the war, like them—a four-year-old Jewish girl in hiding, raised in a Franciscan convent, and separated from both parents.

Fifty-eight years after she left Poland as a child, she returns to her childhood land with her daughter, Dr. Anat Balint, in this moving thirty-minute documentary about a lost childhood, the power of optimism, and the generosity of motherhood.

Dr. Anat Balint is a Visiting Lecturer in Israel Studies at SF State. She is a media scholar and lecturer at Tel Aviv University with expertise in the political economy of the media. Dr. Balint earned a Ph.D. from the University of London.

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.