A letter in Yiddish from Russian Jewish mother Feiga Shamis to two of her children (Courtesy photo) Filmmaker LeeAnn Dance interviews Feiga Shamis’s granddaughter in the Kiev Jewish Cemetery (Courtesy photo) visit the Ukrainian city of Verba (Courtesy photo) Vestiges of the Ukrainian Jewish community that lived in the Pale of Settlement include this Jewish star (Courtesy photo) walks with LeeAnn Dance through the Ukrainian city of Vyshnivets (Courtesy photo) Vestiges of the historic Ukrainian Jewish community that lived in the Pale of Settlement include this broken tombstone (Courtesy photo) Some of the 176 Jewish children rescued by South African Jewish philanthropist Isaac Ochberg from the pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution (Courtesy photo) anti-Jewish pogroms erupted from 1917 to 1921 the period is considered by some as a precursor to the Holocaust The Jews who suffered included Feiga Shamis a mother of 12 who fled from town to town to escape anti-Semitic violence she placed her four youngest children in an orphanage were offered a chance to emigrate to South Africa in 1921 as part of a rescue of Jewish children This decision has long occupied the mind of her South African granddaughter scholarly documentary about the tragedy of pogroms.” “A lot of people are sort of blown away by this history they did not know about,” Dance said are so grateful to understand the background to their own family’s story… It also really resonates with non-Jewish audiences too who are really struck by the linkings of this period of violence and what happened 20 years later with the Holocaust.” “We selected ‘My Dear Children’ for its historical significance its solidly researched backbone and its sturdy production values,” Lloyd Komesar producer of the Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival “The film has great integrity in its presentation as well as palpable drama not always found in this type of documentary.” an area where the tsars forced Jews to live The area had “the largest population of Jews ever,” Dance said She noted that diverse ethnic groups such as Ukrainians and Poles coexisted with Jews there before deadly disruptive pogroms by younger generations in 1881 and from 1903-1906 the rise of Lenin and the Russian Civil War between Red and White armies “No group from that time period can claim to be well-behaved and not anti-Semitic,” Dance said The story of the period was unfamiliar to Dance when she first read “Shalom Shalom: My Dear Children,” a book comprising a 174-page letter that Feiga Shamis sent to her children Mannie and Rose in South Africa having lost their knowledge of the Yiddish in which it was written Favish traveled to Ukraine with a group that included her daughter They met the sole survivor of the Jewish community of the town of Shumsk and visited what Dance called devastated and decrepit Jewish cemeteries Dance noticed “the total absence of Jewish life.” one of the most determined people I’ve ever met,” Dance said of the anti-apartheid activist-turned-university administrator There’s so much compassion and caring in that family.” These qualities would be needed as Favish grappled to understand her grandmother’s decision to send 8-year-old Mannie and 10-year-old Rose across the globe in a rescue of 177 Jewish children organized by South African Jewish philanthropist Isaac Ochberg Mannie did not see his mother again until decades later and he visited her briefly while serving in the Middle East in World War II “[Mannie] says a line to his legal assistant—‘I must have been a very naughty boy for her to send me away’—that’s very haunting.” The documentary shows the grim fate of many Jews who stayed through photos of pogrom victims and never-before-seen footage of an actual pogrom Dance found scholars to explain the period’s horrors including Brandeis University researcher Irina Astashkevich who was able to assess Feiga Shamis’s book as a historical document Dance described Astashkevich as indispensable Dance said there remains a lack of knowledge about this time period more people become familiar with Feiga’s story and the tragic era it reveals