Full Description
Bay Area native Daniel Meyers tells a true story of a 'conspiracy of goodness' by working class French Catholics who sheltered and loved the two young children of a Jewish family. Suzanne and Henri Ribouloue lived on the same street as the Melmeds, a Jewish family in the town of Compiegne during World War II. When asked about her courage, Suzanne simply says: " I made the decision, you don't let children go to their death, after that it was easy." Daniel documents Rachel and Leon Melmed's return to Compiegne to celebrate Suzanne's 90th birthday with the rest of their adopted family. Rachel and Leon were the only Jews from Compiegne who remained alive after 1942.
This is a very personal story for filmmaker Daniel Meyers. His mother, Odette Meyers narrowly escaped during a round up of Paris Jews in 1942. Like Rachel and Leon, she was hidden by a Catholic family and survived the war in German-occupied France. Her story was told in the 1986 Academy Award nominated documentary THE COURAGE TO CARE.
Filmmaker Bio(s)
Born in California in 1960, Daniel Meyers has two university degrees, in Anthropology and Urban Studies, and speaks English, French and Spanish. For ten years he worked as a builder/remodeler in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended various universities and traveled extensively in Mexico, Cuba, Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Since 1987, Mr. Meyers has worked in the domain of television documentaries, magazine shows and educational films. His work as a cinematographer, associate producer and editor has been well acclaimed and received many awards including a 1993 Academy Award Nomination for best short documentary for "When Abortion Was Illegal" and a 1997 Northern California Emmy for Best Documentary for "From Danger To Dignity."
His work in the U.S. has been primarily for local and national PBS, and has also included work for NBC, Fox TV, Nickelodeon, Turner Network Television and the Travel Channel. In 1995 Mr. Meyers moved to Europe where he has been working on documentaries and magazine shows for France 2, France 3, La Cinquième and Arte (France), RTL and ZDF (Germany), Channel 9 and ABC (Australia), and APTV, EBN, WTN, BBC World Service, BBC-2, and Channel 4 (Great Britain).
