A memory from Korvettes in Nanuet is the inspiration for a play now heading to London
One Saturday afternoon in 1967, Roger Peltzman was shopping for a Beatles’ album with his mother at Korvette’s in Nanuet when he asked her about her family.
As they walked from the toys to the record department, Beatrice Peltzman unspooled a story that changed the trajectory of her 6-year-old son’s life.
The boy learned how she, her parents and older brother had fled Berlin when Hitler came to power, hiding in a tiny attic in Brussels until they were discovered by the Nazis. How his mother climbed through a bathroom window and was later smuggled out of danger dressed as a nun — the only one to escape deportation and death at Auschwitz.
That story frames the film, “Dedication,” a one-man play written and produced by Peltzman in which he grapples with being the son of a Holocaust survivor, while following in the musical footsteps of an uncle he never knew.
“My mother’s tragedy was losing her entire family at 17,” Peltzman says in the film. “Mine was knowing yet not knowing them, what you might call the presence of absence.”
The 66-minute film weaves narrative, projected images and solo piano performances into a poignant, occasionally humorous portrait. Peltzman, who calls himself “the world’s shortest Beatles’ fan,” paces the dimly lit stage, returning every so often to his piano to play everything from the blues to a Chopin lullaby.
Jewish Film Festival: JCC Rockland’s international event returns, in person and virtually
"Dedication" will be shown May 4 at the JCC Rockland in West Nyack as part of the upcoming 20th Annual International Jewish Film Festival. After the screening, Peltzman, an accomplished pianist, will perform a Chopin nocturne.
Peltzman's journey to uncover the fate of his mother’s family leads him to visit Auschwitz and to perform on the same Brussels stage where her brother, Norbert, had captivated audiences.
Norbert Stern, hailed as one of Belgium’s finest pianists before his death at age 21 at Auschwitz, became Peltzman’s muse, a presence in musical conversations encouraging him to improve his playing.
“If only one recording of Norbert’s existed, he’d be remembered,” Peltzman says in the film. “But there aren’t any, so it’s up to me to make sure that the world never forgets him.”
Peltzman is a Blauvelt native and Tappan Zee High School graduate who now lives in Washington Heights. He has presented “Dedication” worldwide, but this will be the first Rockland showing.
“It’s a homecoming so it has a special meaning to me,” Peltzman, 61, said in a recent interview.
The performance has garnered strong reviews and audience responses because it’s told “through the eyes of a regular, suburban, second-generation, secular Jew who has to make sense of all this,” Peltzman said, adding: “The enormity of the Holocaust, you can't really take it in, but if you focus on just a few people, regular people who were caught in this terrible web, it really affects people.”
“Dedication” premiered as a play performed by Peltzman at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022. It will be staged in June during a three-week run in London, and will be staged next January at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan.
Visit https://vimeo.com/684034950 to see the film’s trailer.
Robert Brum is a freelance journalist who writes about the Hudson Valley. Contact him and read his work at robertbrum.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: JCC film fest: 'Dedication' was at Fringe, is headed to London
