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Life & Times Transcript
07/12/06 Announcer>> This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- They survived the holocaust, but will they live to see insurance payments that are long overdue? Si Frumkin>> We're old. Pretty soon we'll be dead and, once I am gone, who is going to ask for my father's insurance claim? Nobody. And they'll win because time has passed and time is passing. Time is on their side. Val Zavala>> And then, you'll find them draped on a door, rolling off a wheel, or piling on a pegboard, but you'll never find them boring. They're members of the Diavolo Dance Theater. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> There's a legacy to Hitler's holocaust that you may never have thought about: poverty. The poverty rate among holocaust survivors is about five times that of other Jews. So would restitution programs help? Well, thousands of Jewish families are suing foreign insurance companies for unpaid death benefits and, as Toni Guinyard tells us, it's a long and difficult process. Joseph Goldfarb>> My father paid insurance and now they say they don't have any claim. Toni Guinyard>> Joseph Goldfarb is the son of a Polish flour mill owner. He is one of an estimated fifteen to twenty thousand holocaust survivors living in the state of California. He, like so many other survivors of the Nazi death camps, has completed form after form, written letter after letter, in an effort to cash in European insurance policies he says his father purchased prior to World War II. Joseph Goldfarb>> My father paid insurance all the time while he was insured and now, after this happened, they wash their hands. I mean, they say we didn't have any claim. We didn't pay any insurance. Toni Guinyard>> The problem, he has no proof the policies existed. No documentation to confirm what his father paid, only his memories in his words on paper. It's a situation confronting Michael Freeman every day. He is the director of the Bet Tdesek Holocaust Reparations Program. The nonprofit public interest law firm is helping people like Joseph Goldfarb try to get money they say is owed to them by insurance companies. Michael Freeman>> All the reparations money that people are filing claims for is their money. It's a return of their money. It's a return of their assets. The insurance companies took the position, in some instances, that the premiums were not paid. Well, for those survivors that were in concentration camps, for those survivors that were forced into slave labor camps, they could not pay those premiums. Toni Guinyard>> Freeman is helping survivors appeal to ICHEIC, the International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims. It's chaired by former United States Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger. Freeman says ICHEIC has rejected most claims and settled less than three percent filed. Michael Freeman>> The offers are insulting. For example, for policies of twenty thousand dollars, people are offered five hundred dollars. People who have had claims that have been substantiated by documentation are being ignored. Toni Guinyard>> ICHEIC released a list of 360,000 names of holocaust-era insurance policyholders. It's what holocaust survivor, Si Frumkin, has been waiting for. Si Frumkin>> Throughout all these years, the insurance companies in Europe absolutely refused to release the lists with the names of those people who had bought life insurance policies from them before the war. I looked at the list that was published. On that list, there is, to my amazement, an Aaron Frumkin, which is not my father's name, but it is from our town. Toni Guinyard>> Frumkin and his parents survived three years in a German concentration camp. His father, Nicholas, died twenty days before U.S. liberation forces rolled in. He describes his father as a well-educated, sophisticated, cosmopolitan businessman. Si Frumkin>> It is inconceivable to me, totally inconceivable, that this individual would not have had life insurance on his wife, my mom, and myself. It's inconceivable. Toni Guinyard>> Although Frumkin does not know if his father had insurance, he filed a claim anyway. He says, since international insurance was a good investment prior to the war, it simply makes sense. Si Frumkin>> People bought life insurance policies from German companies, from Swiss companies, from Italian companies, in the absolutely firm belief that eventually that money would be repaid if anything would happen. Toni Guinyard>> The war happened. The holocaust happened. The horrors are discussed daily at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance. >> "The holocaust is a singularly Jewish experience because only the Jews were destined to die just by the accident of their birth." Toni Guinyard>> But few hear about the struggles holocaust survivors are having with insurance claims. Many survivors sense they are in a race against time in a battle pitting them against European insurance companies. Joseph Goldfarb>> Hard. Si Frumkin>> We're old. Pretty soon we'll be dead and, once I am gone, who is going to ask for my father's insurance claim? Nobody, and they'll win because time has passed and time is passing. Time is on their side. Joseph Goldfarb>> It's not fair. They're trying to get away. I mean, the money they took in, they want to keep it. I mean, they don't want to pay out. Toni Guinyard>> So what happens now? Joseph Goldfarb>> Nothing. They're waiting until we're all going to die out and that's it. Si Frumkin>> They'll continue buying the jet planes and the villas on the Riviera while some of the survivors here whose parents may have had insurance on them will continue living in old folks' homes and eating dog food. Toni Guinyard>> The anger fuels Frumkin's efforts to help indigent holocaust survivors. He spends hour after hour going through boxes of applications from those requesting financial help. Survivor Joseph Goldfarb uses music as a way to escape, each note helping ease present frustrations, if only for a few minutes each day. Joseph Goldfarb>> Our generation is going. All the survivors, I mean, every day you have funerals. I'm eighty-six years old. It happens I'm in good shape. Not everybody my age is so lucky. Val Zavala>> Recently, the government of Hungary announced that it is offering a restitution program to certain holocaust survivors. Jewish groups here in Los Angeles expected about fifty people to apply. Instead, more than two hundred fifty came forward. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> And now for this Life and Times story update. You may recall two years ago when we reported on high levels of lead detected in some brands of candy made in Mexico and exported to the United States. Well, now three candy manufacturers have agreed to substantially reduce the amount of lead found in the spicy candies that are popular with children. In 2004, a team of investigative reporters from The Orange County Register compiled a list of a hundred twelve candies that tested high for the presence of lead. William Heisel>> Most of the candies that are testing high are testing high at a level that will poison a child's blood with one candy. Val Zavala>> They traced the source of the contamination to lead-based inks used on some candy wrappers and the lead-based glaze on pots containing some brands of tamarind candy. Jennifer McKim>> One of the things that we found out was that it's in the chili. It doesn't happen in the fields, but it can happen because they don't wash it well enough. It's part of the manufacturing process. Val Zavala>> Under the recent settlement, Mexican candy manufacturers have agreed to meet United States federal guidelines on lead in candies and to conduct regular testing of their chili supply. Toni Guinyard>> Each year, there are approximately ten thousand earthquakes in the southern California, but most of those are so small that we don't even feel them. But we do talk about the "big one", when a major earthquake is going to take place. Recent reports state that the San Andreas fault is overdue for a major earthquake, so we wanted to find out more. We came to Caltech and spoke with staff seismologist, Dr. Kate Hutton. Kate Hutton>> I don't think our view of the southern San Andreas has changed because of the studies that have been talked about. We knew that the last earthquake on the Coachella segment was probably around 1690 and that's a long time for accumulating strains on a fault like the San Andreas. What that story from San Diego did was add some weight to what we already knew. But, yes, strain is accumulating on the San Andreas and it has been a long time. As far as worrying, I think, well, we need to consider it seriously as a hazard, but remember that we're talking about geology here. We really can't say next week versus ten or twenty years from now. We couldn't tell. Toni Guinyard>> Can we assume that the stress is building up? Kate Hutton>> We know that the stress is building up because there's a motion that we can measure between the North American plate and the Pacific plate and the boundaries of the San Andreas fault. So the faults are creeping along like this. The fault is stuck shut and the stress is accumulating as deformation in the crust. When it reaches the breaking strength of the fault -- the last time it did that was in 1690 -- it will cause an earthquake that will break the whole section of the Coachella Valley segment of the San Andreas like from the Salton Sea up to Palm Springs. Then maybe or maybe not, it will extend farther north into Riverside-San Bernardino area. We don't know if that's part of the scenario or not. It's a big difference on the size of the earthquake. Toni Guinyard>> What does it say to the general public when we read stories or hear explanations from geologists, seismologists, geophysicists, and you disagree? You don't see the same data the same way. Kate Hutton>> Well, I think it's like any science. You know, we're on the cutting edge and we're trying to gather new information and interpret it. The first interpretation may or may not be right and you may have to go and gather more data to answer questions that are raised by your study that you finished. That's normal for science. So in a way, I think the public should not expect pat answers from science because, if it's interest to science, it's on the cutting edge and everything is not known. Toni Guinyard>> Now behind us, this is one of the new tools you have available to us in the media and also to the public. Explain what we're looking at. Kate Hutton>> Well, what we're looking at is a movie of the seismic waves passing out from an earthquake in the Palm Springs area and passing out across southern California in real time pretty much. So you can see, for this particular quake, if you'd been out here, the shaking would be over, but if you're out here, you'd be beginning to feel the earthquake. Toni Guinyard>> Now what can we learn from this, though? We're sitting at home and we can access this on our computers. Kate Hutton>> Well, this is a graphic display of a simulation that was produced in our super-computing center downstairs, okay? So this display itself may not give a lot of information, but the waves here, for example, stay around a long time in this Coachella Valley because they're sort of trapped in there. The waves enter the soft sediment and they amplify and they can't get out again, so the shaking lasts longer and they're stronger in sedimentary basins. The Los Angeles basin is actually a very big hole in the ground which is a couple of miles deep. It's filled with dirt, if you will, that has been washed off the San Gabriel Mountains and it's very soft. It's like if you have a bowl of Jell-O and you shake the bowl a little bit. The Jell-O moves a lot. The same thing is true of these basin areas. Toni Guinyard>> We've become familiar with those big drums. What happened to them? They're no longer here in this room. Kate Hutton>> Well, basically they became outmoded. First of all, they're not made anymore, so when they break, they're hard to fix. Toni Guinyard>> So you were doing this for our benefit? Kate Hutton>> And they have been basically movie props for ten years. Toni Guinyard>> Okay, that's not a good thing to know at this point (laughter). Kate Hutton>> The work is done by our computers, okay? So what we did was we replaced them with a type of display like this where, instead of seeing a quake that was recorded hours ago, you can see it -- oh, it's going to start over -- you see as it happens as if it were just coming in. So this is a quake that happened a couple of years ago in 2003, but it's very photogenic and you can see how the data comes in to the station that's on this display. We can take any quake and make one of these, so next time there's a magnitude whatever that you come out here and cover, we can take that one and we could put in on the display and you can see it as if it were just happening. Toni Guinyard>> Now one of the things you're also doing is you're making it accessible online to the general public and what is it you want us to understand as we access all of these different maps and the data? Kate Hutton>> Well, I think it's good to have people just generally familiar with all the small earthquakes that we have because it's sort of a reminder that we live in earthquake country and it's nice to be prepared. Toni Guinyard>> Are we getting closer to the point where we can predict earthquakes? Kate Hutton>> Well, I think we've learned a lot and we've learned a lot about where the hazards are, what type of quakes happen in different areas, how the effects happen in different areas. What we don't have, and is the most difficult, is the date. If, in terms of earthquake prediction, you're expecting the date and the hour, you know, of a quake way in advance, we still can't do that. Another thing I think people don't realize about earthquake prediction is, like weather prediction, it's statistical, okay? People would seem to be expecting exact dates in advance. If we were very lucky, we might be able to do as well as the weather service. But with weather, you can see what's happening in the atmosphere. You can take measurements. With earthquakes, it's five or ten miles below us where the key things are happening. So we have a long way to catch up to get to the point where weather prediction is right now, and we know that that's not great sometimes. Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Kate Hutton, thank you so much for unscrambling all of this for us and thank you for spending some time with Life and Times. Kate Hutton>> You're welcome. Thank you. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> They defy traditional notions of a dance company. Diavolo is a cross between dancers and acrobatics and they'll thrill you even if you aren't a dance fan. Vicki Curry met artistic director, Jacques Heim. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> It's part dance and part acrobatics with maybe a little circus act thrown in. It's called Diavolo and the man behind it is Jacques Heim. Jacques Heim>> I want to talk to our audience. I want them to be inspired. I want them to have fun. Vicki Curry>> Heim is founder and artistic director of Diavolo Dance Theater. He's trying to redefine dance so that it's more accessible to mainstream audiences. Jacques Heim>> Modern dance for a lot of audiences, for general audiences, is very strange. It's very obscure. Dance is on the way to be extinct a little bit and I think why Diavolo is great is that it's mixing the art and entertainment together. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> If anyone is going to have a non-dance dance company, it's Jacques Heim. Growing up in Paris, he never thought about dance, but when he went to Middlebury College in Vermont, he took a class that changed his life. Jacques Heim>> I was going to go into theater when I arrived in this country in America, but then because my accent was so strong, people would say, "Jacques, I'm sorry, but you cannot do Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare. Nobody will understand you." So then my friends told me, "Why don't you come in and take some dance class? You don't have to speak." I really discovered the power of movement. For me, it was another form of theater. Vicki Curry>> Heim got a Masters in choreography at CalArts and, when he graduated, decided to start his own company. Jacques Heim>> And I was doing something different, so I look what is out there. And because I'm very fluent by texture, by environment, that's why I want to make movement in structure. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Diavolo's signature is large set pieces like this wheel. The dancers use it as a springboard for a flurry of hyperkinetic movements and athletic feats. Jacques Heim>> I'm not a traditional choreographer because I'm not a dancer, so I want to create pieces that are very visual, very organic, very visceral. Vicki Curry>> When Heim wants to create a new piece, he starts with a new structure and then asks the dancers to just play around on it. Ken Arata>> He just said, "Get on it and go" and about half an hour later, I had to show him a couple of things I had on it and we kind of collaborated on what I could do here and there on it, going over it, around it, through it, and it's a great feeling to be able to just create. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> So if I had to create a salad that is a Diavolo salad, it would be a little bit of everyday movement, pedestrian movement. It would be a little bit of gymnastics. It would be a little bit of acrobatics. You add a little ballet, a little bit of modern dance. You put structures. You put music, costumes and lights. You mix it and you have a Diavolo. Vicki Curry>> To make a Diavolo salad, you need ingredients you don't usually find in a dance company. Jacques Heim>> So I have dancers from the ballet background, modern background, gymnastic, acrobatic, theater backgrounds and we all come together in our space and collaborate. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> I've said artists are all very abstract. What we do is live abstract paintings. I tell my audience that actually that, as they watch the piece, they're actually in a way creating fifty percent of the piece. They have to create their own story. In a way, it has a theme underneath our pieces, but it's still very abstract. So therefore we do this piece called "Trajectory" which is sort of the abstract boat. That's a piece about destination and destiny. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> We have a piece called "Detour", this twelve-foot high wall with the pegs coming out and it's very intense. That's a piece about the cares of everyday life through an abstract military obstacle course. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Most Diavolo dances are dangerous to perform, but Heim says that's not just for show. He thinks danger forces people to work together. He first experienced this after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Jacques Heim>> I did not know my neighbors, but it's only when the earthquake happened, when we became in a state of survival, that all my neighbors came out. Suddenly, we were talking with each other. We were sharing water and food and blankets and we were helping one another. There I realized suddenly a small community on our street started to form and that's what I wanted with my dance company. Vicki Curry>> The audience not only sees this teamwork in action, they hear it. The dancers call out to each other during the performances. [Film Clip] Garrett Wolf>> The flyer will not see her catchers until the very last second, so she really needs to know before she jumps off into space that her catchers are there. So that's the reason why there's so much communication on stage. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> As a gymnast in the group, these kinds of athletic acts are second nature. But for the classically trained dancers, it takes a little more time to adjust. Crystal Zibalese>> Some of the bigger flies are a little nerve-wracking at first, but you always feel pretty comfortable with the group. Everyone is really focused and, you know, works together and, if you're ever in trouble, they're there to help you. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Heim teaches that same sense of teamwork in Diavolo's education program. Jacques Heim>> I love teaching because it's a way of sharing. It's a way of collaborating with students and teaching is dear to me. With Diavolo, I wanted all of my dancers to be able to teach because it is very important for them to understand about communication and understand about sharing ideas. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> Education is very important and I believe it's very important to inspire kids so eventually, you know, kids can see that art is not really a very strange thing and it can be part of their whole life. Vicki Curry>> It's all part of the mission of Diavolo Dance Theater. Take the mystery out of dance, make it exciting and, hopefully, win over new fans. Jacques Heim>> Diavolo is a sort of mixture between the art form and the entertainment form. That's very valuable because then people can realize that dance is not so strange after all. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Diavolo is giving free performances this Friday and Saturday at the California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. For details, go to their website at diavolo.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Val Zavala>> Next time on Life and Times -- Venice boardwalk is known for its vendors and colorful characters, so why do some people say it's got to change? >> They want to turn it into Third Street Promenade. They want to raise the property values and that's all well and good, but there's that little thorn in their side called the First Amendment. >> It was out of control. Everyone agreed that it was out of control. Val Zavala>> That's next time on Life and Times. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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