Making An Interview with Martin Spett
By: Chris McShane and Alex Koveos
It was the fall of 2005, and I was in the process of choosing my classes for the spring semester of 2006, my last at Manhattan College. I had taken a couple history classes at Manhattan that were very much intertwined with the government major I was on my way to completing. So I looked through the available classes for the spring, and it seemed very appropriate to enroll in the class on genocide and the Holocaust offered by Dr. Horn. Little did I know I had taken a step that would lead to my participation in a project that would add so much to what I would learn in the classroom.
When the class began in the spring of 2006, it was clear that we were all involved in a class that would allow us to learn in ways that other classes could not. We would be hearing from several Holocaust survivors in person, speaking only to our relatively small group of students. One of the survivors who graced us with his presence was Martin Spett, a man I would come to know in much greater detail over the next couple of years.
Dr. Horn informed the class that an opportunity had arisen through a grant received by the Manhattan College Holocaust Resource Center. Over the summer of 2006, two students would be given the chance to interview one survivor of the Holocaust so as to document the survivor's story to preserve for generations to come. He asked us to let him know if we were interested in participating. Since it was my senior year at Manhattan, I first thought that I wouldn't be able to get involved. I asked Dr. Horn if it would be alright to participate even after graduation, and luckily the answer was yes.
Though there were two grants available, three of us expressed interest in the project. After a few talks with Dr. Horn, we were all accepted to participate in the project. I would be partnered with Alex Koveos, and Liz Harris would be working on a separate interview. And not too much later, I found out that the survivor Alex and I would be interviewing was Martin Spett. Martin was a powerful speaker when he came to visit our class, and he had already been heavily involved with Manhattan's Holocaust Resource Center. He had collaborated on a book with Dr. Horn about his life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Since the material already existed in print, our goal was to produce a DVD that would capture on video the stories of Martin's life.
We began studying in detail the book which we had already read for our class: Reflections of the Soul: Martin Spett's Holocaust Experiences. The book proved to be an invaluable source of knowledge in preparing our questions for interviewing Martin over the next several months.
The interviews started in June of 2006, shortly after I graduated and began working for Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz during the busiest time of year for local campaigns. Coordinating schedules with work, Alex, and Martin was not an easy task, but we were able to set up dates for interviews on the weekends. Luckily, Liz was available to operate the video camera so that both Alex and I could be on the screen for all of the interviews. An important element of the project, as set out by Dr. Horn, was to capture both Martin's words and our reactions to them.
Upon our arrival for the first interview, it was very clear to us that Martin and his wife Joan were going to be gracious hosts for the duration of the project. We were welcomed to their home as if we were family, and the nervousness we may have felt about getting our interviews right seemingly disappeared when we sat down in their living room. Having prepared a list of questions for Martin, the first session of two hours seemed to fly by. After each question, Martin provided detailed answers that captured our attention. Despite the nature of the time and events he was discussing, Martin was able to maintain both his composure and a sense of humor throughout the interview.
One of the things that stood out the most and was a source of one our first questions was the fact that Martin had made a vow to his father to never speak about the Holocaust. The fact that he broke that vow in 1980 after sticking to it for decades speaks volumes about the world in which we still live. Martin heard of a book published by a university professor that denied the Holocaust had ever happened. He could not hold back the urge to speak the truth about what had happened to him and his family during those long, painful years.
It's important to realize that even though 1980 was nearly three decades ago, the denial of the Holocaust still exists today. There are people who really try to disprove the existence of the Holocaust, as unbelievable as it may sound. It was a fact to which I was not exposed until I participated in Dr. Horn's class, and it really struck a cord after hearing from Martin Spett.
We conducted several interviews at Martin's apartment over the months of the summer, and on one afternoon in July, I was able to interview Martin and his sister Roslyn together at Roslyn's home in New Jersey. Alex couldn't make it because of a family trip to Greece, but Liz offered to tape the interview and provide the ride to New Jersey. Much like her brother, Roslyn was incredibly gracious in both hosting our interview and participating in it. Sitting next to Martin and Roslyn to hear about their shared experience was a very rare opportunity, and I'll never forget that interview.
We continued over interviews over the summer, compiling several tapes of footage, all of which contained invaluable pieces of the story of Martin's life. The Spetts were so kind as to provide us with dinner nearly every time we went to their apartment to conduct an interview. We talked as friends would talk over dinner, and we felt completely at home.
The project felt like it was coming to a close after we conducted our final interviews in August and September of 2006. Admittedly, we were due to finish the DVD by the end of the summer, but there was still much work to be done. Video editing was a process to which we were all new, and we learned how to create the DVD on the fly. Finding time to work on the project was not easy over the next several months, and it took approximately a year before we had created the film An Interview with Martin Spett. Luckily, everyone else involved in the project maintained their patience and understanding of the difficulties we encountered.
The video screened, somewhat fittingly for me, on Election Day of 2007. Though it was a relatively quiet election in the grand scheme of things, there's no such thing as a quiet election when it comes to the line of work in which I am involved. After all the hard work and the great deal of time that had been put into the project, I was able to stop by the Holocaust Center's screening of the film at Smith Auditorium. I was in awe of the crowd that had shown up to watch, and the smile on Martin's face made it very clear that all the time and effort was extraordinarily invaluable.
My initial expectations of what I would take out of this project were high, but even they were exceeded in the end. I do not want to retell Martin's tale here because he has done it so well both in his book and on the film which we created. But this project allowed me to learn about so many things, most important of which was the level to which we, as people, can take hatred and ignorance. Martin was the lens through which I learned best what it was like for someone to struggle to survive through the Holocaust. Genocide, of course, has not disappeared from our planet, and there is so much to learn from the experiences of those who survived the Holocaust.
This project was an opportunity that only a few people of my generation will have, but if you're offered an opportunity to participate in the project, I urge you to take advantage and apply to create a film like the one that we did. If you're reading this before watching the film, I hope you enjoy it and learn from it. Most importantly, I hope you remember everything Martin Spett has to say.
I am very proud that my work was able to document the life of such a great person who lived through such a tragic time and devoted much of his adult life to spreading the word about what had happened to him and his family. Without people like Martin, who has spoken to countless audiences and put so much time into both the book and the film, the effects of the Holocaust could be lost on future generations.
An Interview with Martin Spett was the perfect way to end my time at Manhattan College. It was the biggest and most significant project in which I took part, and I could not be more pleased that I was able to spend my time creating this film.