Leo Kantor's speech at the opening of the 15th Open Russian National Documentary Film Festival in Ekaterinburg, on 1 October 2004.

Dear friends, I have been asked to say a few words, and I whould like to start by telling you about my first encounter with Ekaterinburg, two years ago, when I saw Aleksej Fedortjenko's documentary film from Ekaterinburg. The film "David" tells the story of a nine-year-old boy. Captured by the Germans in Minsk in 1941, he was then subjected by them to cruel medical experiments and was exhibited at medical schools in a number of occupied European countries. By goodfortune, he was saved by a German nurse, and he returned to Russia at the age of fifteen yearsafter the end of the war. For more than 25 years, until 1973, he was " kept" there in labour camps, without trial or conviction. He died two years ago. It is literally true to say that Aleksej Fedortjenko completed his filming with David Levin on the Monday, and that he was called to his maker on the following Friday. At the previous documentary film festival, "Humanity in the World", held in Stockholm in 2003, which addressed the subject of humanity and human dignity, the international jury awarded a first prize to the film "David". I was in Poland in the following year, when I was a member of the jury for the film festival, "Europe's Point of Divergence/Convergence", in Lublin. When it was my turn to say whether Fedortjenko should receive first prize, I answered that I had previously been a member of a jury which had awarded him a Grand prix, but on that occasion it had been in Sweden, in Stockholm. I also said that I had no objection to casting my vote once again for the main prize.
David Levin
More recently, in April 2004, I was a member of the jury of a major international film festival in Warsaw. On this occasion, too, the international panel of judg-es awarded this same film one of the main prizes, and none other than Oscarwinner An-drzej Wajda presented the distinction to Aleksej Fedortjenko from Ekaterinburg. That is when I decided to travel to Ekaterinburg, to see for myself the city where such films can be produced and to meet Russian documentary filmmakers from the entire country. And before I return home to Sweden, I whould like to relate another story about another boy and his mother.

In 1941, the Germans were about seven kilometres from the city of Charkov, when a beautiful young woman fled from her place of work at the city's civil defence office, where she was a secretary. Those who were employed in these institutions were the last to be evacuated. She arrived at her apartment, collected her small son and a few photographs, hurried to the station, jumped into the last carriage of the last train, and set off for the Ural Mountains in the direction of Ekaterinburg. The boy's father was killed at the beginning of the war.

The train stopped close to Ekaterinburg, in the town of Alapajevsk. Here the woman met a Polish non-commissioned officer who had escaped from imprisonment by the Germans in 1940 and had had the good sense to make the journey from Germany on foot as far as the Russian border. Because he was an engineer, he was not shot by Stalin's supporters but was sent to work in an armaments factory in Alapajevsk, near Ekaterinburg. He adopted the boy and took both him and his mother to Poland in 1946. The boy grew up with his mother's sense of longing for Charkov, in an atmosphere of impending danger. Fate subsequently led him to the West. He has devoted the whole of his adult life to working with people, among people, for people. He later became an organizer of film festivals about humanity and human dignity. He has been extremely fortunate in his own life. He now works at a university, writes articles for European newspapers, represents an organization with several thousand members, which is committed to upholding human dignity, and participates in opinion-forming activities.

Now that he is no longer quite as young as he once was, he is visiting you here in Ekaterinburg, not only to watch films, but also, and perhaps first and foremost, to bow down and thank the place on this earth that was itself forced to endure such interminable suffering and yet, in spite of everything, was able to save the young woman and her small son.