Jean-Claude van Itallie was 3 years old on May 10, 1940 when Germany invaded Belgium. The van Itallie family immediately fled, eventually arriving in New York, thanks to Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the courageous Portuguese consul whose visas saved many Jewish refugees.

Edith Goldenhar’s mother, Paulette Szafran, was 12 years old when she fled Brussels with 1000s of other refugees. Stranded in Calais, she and her family were saved from the catastrophic bombings by a kind stranger, Madame Ducatel. In her short film, Return to Calais, Edith follows Paulette’s wartime diary to Calais and meets with today’s refugees and volunteers.

May 10th, 1940 and 2020: REFUGEES AND SAVIORS, THEN AND NOW brings these long-time friends together for a 1-hour program, starting with Edith’s film Return to Calais and followed by Jean-Claude’s vivid reminiscences of his refugee flight as a young child. He and Edith will honor their saviors—a person in power and an ordinary citizen—and speak to the current refugee crisis, sharpened by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a time when the world is told to “shelter in place” and “stay at home,” what about refugees, who have no shelter or place to call home? The messages of Jean-Claude’s memoir and Edith’s film are as true now as in 1940: Empathy connects the dots of displacement, across generations and geography.

Q&A will follow.