USA 2023, Aviva Kempner, 106 min, Original Version with German Subtitles

As part of DOK.aroundtheclock, we present the documentary A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings in cooperation with the DOK.fest and the U.S. Consulate General in Munich. Berlin-born, Washington, D.C.-based filmmaker Aviva Kempner has been making award-winning documentaries about unrecognized Jewish heroes for more than four decades. In A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings, she focuses on the story of her mother, Helen Ciesla Covensky, and her uncle, David Chase - siblings who survived the Holocaust separately and were reunited after the war.

A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of two Siblings is a family memoir focusing on the pre-war and wartime experiences of siblings Hanka Ciesla, who passed as a Polish Catholic within Germany, and Dudek Ciesla, who survived Auschwitz, and the story of Harold Kempner, who captured their reunion in Berlin as a military government journalist. The film ends with their rebuilt lives in America.

Interviews of Helen Ciesla Covensky and David Chase are from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, conducted by Rosalie Franks in 1997 and filmed by Tom Landis and Abraham Olman.

A talk with director Aviva Kempner (via Zoom) will take place after the screening.

Moderator: Prof. Dr. Kevin Ostoyich (Valparaiso University)

Director: Aviva Kempner
Screenplay: Lucia Fox-Shapiro, Aviva Kempner
Cut: Lucia Fox-Shapiro
Music: John Keltonic
Producers: Aviva Kempner, Dr. Eva Fogelman, Emily Nesha Streim

Photo: Scene from "A Pocketful of Miracles" ©The Ciesla Foundation