Film examines family's connection to 'Mein Kampf'

When Hinda Mandell studied post-World War II Germany at Oxford, she began reading an English translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Caught up in a swirl of emotions familiar to many who lost family in the Holocaust, the 21-year-old threw the book across the room.

Before long, a friend stopped by. Seeing the disheveled book on the floor, he became angry and admonished Mandell that all books should be treated with greater respect.

"That's my Mein Kampf story," says Mandell, now a Rochester Institute of Technology assistant communications professor.

It's not her only Mein Kampf story, though.

There's another, bulging with tentacles of meaning, mystery and motivation. It's the story of her journey to unlock the history of a 1937 German edition of the book, which has been displayed in her family's Massachusetts home for decades.

The Mein Kampf's place among the Jewish history books of her father, Fred Mandell, still elicits a visceral reaction from many, one that pulsates through the trailer to The Upside Down Book, a documentary that Mandell and her husband, Matthew White, produced and are sharing at RIT on Thursday.

"My father chose to display Mein Kampf upside down as an obvious sign of disrespect to the book and Hitler," she says.

In the trailer, her father talks about the "nervousness, disgust and anger" the book evokes in him. Hinda and her mother, Karen, share their difficulties touching the book and the urge to wash and rewash their hands when they do. It was 2012 before Mandell looked inside, read the inscription and was seized by the mystery of who the original owners were and how her uncle obtained it.

She says she and her older brother remember hearing that their great uncle, Eddie Cohen, had brought it home from World War II after killing a German soldier and taking it from his rucksack. But her dad has said it's more likely that Cohen found it lying next to a dead German soldier; and her mother says he picked it up and stuffed it in his shirt as extra protection from flying bullets.

"For a time I was really obsessed with it. It was like piecing together a puzzle," Mandell says. "My dad and I would get into very involved discussions where he'd say, 'It's not important how he came to get the book. What's important is that we have it, and it's evidence that the Jewish people survived.' I was interested in the mystery of it."

Financing for the film included grants obtained through her academic position at RIT, support from family and friends and a campaign on the Internet funding platform Kickstarter, which exceeded its $5,000 goal and enabled White to work on the project full-time for a while.

As owner and director of 4th Coast Productions, White had the filmmaking skills and equipment; the couple collaborated on the editing but had to hire a lot of "incredible" genealogists in Germany to do legwork abroad.

They also traveled to Germany.

In the end, the journey held some surprises but no definitive answer regarding Cohen's acquisition of the book. Mandell, however, is at peace with it, she says. They found out that the inscription was from the mayor of Lubeck, Germany, to Walter and Klara Jess on their wedding day in 1938, which led to contact with the Jesses' children.

Last June, the connection that the book forged between the two families took on an even more unusual tone when the couple's daughter, Mirabelle, was born — on Walter Jess' birthday.

"I think it's incredible," Mandell says. "Oh, my goodness, just another example of how my family and how the Jess family are connected. She's like the newest generation in the world and shares a birthday with a man who lived a very different life due to historical circumstances. We're connected. I wonder what he would have thought to know that a man named Eddie Cohen from Brooklyn, N.Y., a Jewish-American soldier, took his copy of Mein Kampf, and then, 68 years later, his great-grandniece is born on the same day. That just blows my mind … the synchronicity of it, or is it one great big coincidence?"

The Upside Down Book is being shown on the 2013-2014 film festival circuit. It already was at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, the Jewish Film Festival in Detroit and the SNOB (Somewhere North of Boston) Film Festival in Concord, N.H., where it won best documentary.

Its Rochester debut as part of "The Globe at the Movies Symposium," pleases the event's organizer, Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, senior lecturer in Russian and global literature in the school's English Department.

"The Upside Down Book reminds us that history is a personal narrative," she says. "The film combines … a historian's loving attention to detail, journalistic curiosity and a scholar's drive to pose challenging questions and create new ways for intercultural and interpersonal connections."

For Mandell, it's very personal.

"It's really special that it's kind of coming home to a place where it really was allowed to be born," she says. And while receiving awards is nice, Mandell's primary hope for the film is to have it begin a number of conversations among people who see it.

"I would like to be part of those conversations about 'How do we honor family memories, how do we inquire about heirlooms, and what do we do about what we find out? We take them for granted," she says.

"We didn't think about the book every day, but it played a role in how we think about Jewish history. This can resonate in families of any background. The discussion is kind of about paying homage to the objects that came before us and the family members who are living or deceased," Mandell says. "In this consumer-based society, objects get a bad rap. But these heirlooms are very special; they have sentimental and historical value."

Schuhle is a Finger Lakes-based freelance writer.

If you go

What: The Globe at the Movies Symposium.

When: 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday.

Where: Bamboo Room (2650) and Reading Room, Center of Campus Life, Rochester Institute of Technology's Henrietta campus.

Cost: Free.

Symposium information: For full schedule, go to scholarworks.rit.edu/gatms/. The screening of The Upside Down Book will be at 9:15 a.m., followed by a Q&A with Hinda Mandell. Other films being shown are The Bicycle (German Democratic Republic, 1980), The Return (Russia, 2003), Dogtooth (Greece, 2009), Kinderwald (Germany, 2013) and Carry On (China, 2013). Each are followed by a talkback or Q&A.

Film information:theupsidedownbook.net.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is on Sunday. Locally, at 4 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Rochester, 1200 Edgewood Ave., Brighton, there will be a service with prayers, music and a candle lighting ceremony with local survivors and their families. Guest speakers will be Louis-Philippe Mendes and Dr. Olivia Mattis. Go to JewishRochester.org.

At 7:30 p.m. at Kilbourn Hall, 26 Gibbs St., Eastman School of Music professors will present a Holocaust Remembrance Day Concert. The cost is $10 at the door. Go to esm.rochester.edu for program details.