How a Filmmaker Is Racing to Preserve Holocaust Memory

I was not allowed to question my grandparents growing up.

“I was not allowed to ask them about the number on their arms.”

But one thing though, as much as they were silent during the day, when I would sleep at my grandparents' house. In the night, I would hear them scream. Leslie Bonita is an accomplished journalist, filmmaker, storyteller, and the founder of the last one's foundation.

Drawing from her family legacy and decades of filmmaking, she preserves Holocaust survivor testimonies to educate future generations and combat historical denial

through powerful storytelling.

What we do with the last ones is we capture with film Holocaust survivors around the world and then we teach in classrooms. And we educate and we do some Holocaust awareness and education because I see these young people,

and I see that they still have empathy and feelings and an understanding of what's going on. And again, this is not a subject that has to do with the Jews. It's something that has to do with human beings. [MUSIC PLAYING]

It spans the globe.

“Like a super high school, internet elders.”

[MUSIC PLAYING] Today, Apple is going to reinvent the fall. It's not over! I'm telling how we're living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jason Langen, and thank you for joining us down here

at the beautiful Miami Beach Studios. And we had to privilege to talk to some of the best entrepreneurs, the disruptors and experts in so many different fields. And today, we have a special guest with us here for our legacy makers show.

Why don't you introduce yourself? What's your name? Where are you from? And what's your business? My name is Elastie Bonita.

Where I'm from? I'm from Paris, France, initially. But I've been here in Miami for 20 years. And my business is not really a business, because it's a 501c3.

It's a foundation. It's called the last ones. And what we do with the last ones is we capture with film Holocaust survivors around the world. And then we teach in classrooms.

And we educate, and we do some Holocaust awareness and education for the young generation. Pretty much everywhere on any platform, online, take talk, whatever. Amazing.

And so Holocaust survivors, yeah, we have the Holocaust Museum. And that whole, it's not a statue. It's like a monument, right? But the hand, the hand, like this.

And when I first went in there,

I didn't know what to expect. But it's absolutely a, it's beautiful.

“B, it's just kind of mind-boggling and shocking, right?”

And it just brings you through a whole journey, really. But yeah, I mean-- J, when was the last time you went there? About a year ago. I'm just saying this because they reopened very recently,

like a few months back. Yes. And now they've integrated a whole new-- I would say experience where you get to ask questions to Holocaust survivors.

It's pretty much something that it's like holograms, even though we're not supposed to call it holograms. It's like three-dimensional or whatever. But it's beautiful because you get to hear even survivors who are no longer with us.

And you can ask questions and everything. Yeah, I saw them doing that construction for quite a while, and they complimented it not too long ago. And so, yeah, did you have a part to do with all of that? Well, we happen to be, they--

so the memorial has supported the work of the last ones for very long time. The memorial is under the roof of greater Miami Jewish Federation. I happen to sit on the board of the greater Miami Jewish Federation. So yes, it's all like a big--

I would say a big family, and we all help each other. Technically, I haven't done anything in that specific thing. But for example, they're using some of the videos that I make. And let's say one of the main survivor--

and probably the first one I have filmed here in Miami

was five years ago, and it was David Shachter, OK? David Shachter passed away almost a year ago. David was one of the founders of the memorial that you're mentioning. So you know, this is why very often we do things like all together.

They will use some of the images that I've done with David, whatever. So look, I'm sure there's no competition for me. If you're asking me, there's no competition

Some people are being very territorial. I'm not. For me, whichever way anybody, and specifically the young people, can learn about the Holocaust. Anyway, is it good way?

Yeah, OK.

Well, I'm sure you're an amazing resource for them.

I mean, because considering what you do and what they do, there has to be teamwork. And if there wasn't, it'd be a sad day, right? Yeah.

“Because you both have, in the end, the same goal, right?”

And there's teamwork, not only with them. I'm doing a lot of work and teamwork with also the memorial in L.A., just reopen the museum. And then very recently, I was in Dallas also working with the memorial there.

Yes, as much as we can share and resources, as much as I could be useful. As much as the videos that I've done and the interviews that I've made over the course of the years can be used and heard and utilized wonderful.

And the happiest. Yeah. I mean, it must be so eye-opening and just-- I don't even know how to describe it. But when you look at the photos before you walk into where

the memorial is, it's just, you know, your speechless, right? Looking at some of the photos. They didn't hold back at all. Or maybe they did, but they're still quite eye-opening to what was going on, right?

I think, no matter what, the Holocaust is not one of those subjects that you can sugarcodes by any means. So I'm not going to say that you saw over there the worst pictures that you could see. But at least what you saw is it's not like--

there were not trying to sugarcode it. So definitely. So what you're describing, what you're saying about yourself, like, you know, it was eye-opening.

“You need to understand that for me, I didn't grow up like this.”

It was in my bottle growing up. My foreground parents were Holocaust survivors. When you grow up with a traumatized family tree, you know it from a very young age. And no one has to tell you, no one ever told me.

It was so obvious. There was a big trauma. Big trauma around food, big trauma around a separation, big trauma around being in a room that has a door closed, and whatever, things like this, okay?

And as much as we were not allowed, I was not allowed to question my grandparents growing up. I was not allowed to ask them about the number, or other arms. I was not allowed to ask them about their accent,

or, you know, about their parents. I was not allowed. But one thing though, as much as they were silent during the day, when I would sleep at my grandparents' house in the night, I would hear them scream.

So they were doing nightmares up until they died. And at night, she would understand the trauma that I'm mentioning. - Yeah. - awful, awful, screams.

So my point is, it's never been eye-opening.

“You need to imagine growing up with this in your bottle,”

basically. - So where do your stories live? You fill them, you interview them, life, and then where do you post these videos? - So they live on, we have already,

we have a website, we have an educational platform. So you can go on the last ones.com. You can go on the last ones.education, we're not only you have videos, but you have all the curriculum around it.

So basically what we're handing is, we're handing the teachers, a full on curriculum and lesson plans so that they can teach and match the mandates, because let's say here in Florida is mandatory education,

like in another 28 states in America. So in order for them to meet the mandates, so imagine you're a teacher, you're gonna go on the last ones.education, and you're gonna click, and everything is for free,

obviously, people insist that I say this, 'cause I felt like it was an obvious thing. But you're a teacher, you go on there, you click eighth grade, like today I'm teaching eighth grade, eighth grade,

I am in Florida,

and basically it's gonna hand you what,

six, seven, eight options. Okay, with short excerpts of each video, the teacher can pick the one he wants, and basically we are holding his hands or her, her hand while they're giving the class

for the hour in order to respect that mandate. And that's where it is,

like look, our target,

“the people that we want to reach out to,”

the people we want to impact, the people we want to inspire young people. Where are they today, they're on social media. So I know that I have had so many conversations about this, with a lot of my,

I don't know if I could say peer or not peer, but are there journalists or other educators or other, and this subject is too serious, it cannot live on social media, and I'm like, kind of disagree with you.

Yeah. If these are the people that we want to reach out to, we need to be on their channels. If it's too serious, it's like, do you see the games that they're playing, right?

It's like, I'm in, and that's just fantasy land, and they're doing whatever on those video games, or the horror movies that they're watching.

“So if they're already getting crazy images”

and fantasy stories, why not tell them about the real thing, and just be open and honest about it, right? You can't just, can't just be all games and fantasy land, right? And also, you know, it just realized this,

by the way, I'm not talking about young people, like I don't know them. They sit at my table dinner every night. Okay, I have three kids, 18, 17, nine. I would say, and this is when they're not with their friends,

so I have a bunch of them coming. I know what impacts them. I know what kind of tools they're on, what they're using. So I'm really, I'm testing a lot of things on them, just to see if it's impactful, if it's working,

and then it also lives by the way, not just there. We're about, we have our new geo-located app that's coming up like in a month. It's an app that's called TLO, and it stands for the last ones.

What does the app do?

Basically, if you have downloaded the geo-located app,

if you're walking the streets of Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, concentration camp, or whatever, you're going to have popping up on your phone, a video of one or a few Holocaust survivors who have something to say about the specific place where you stand.

So let's say, but it's going to work here, too. So you're in Miami, and you're walking by the memorial. Okay, and boom, it's going to pop up on your phone. You're going to have five or six different videos, an excerpt of David Shactor, but not only David Shactor,

the ones who are the survivors that I have filmed that live here in Miami, so that sometimes it's closed. It's closed, but you're walking that say with 15-year-old, and you're like, that was a good opportunity. I wanted to show you some stuff.

Well, you can still do a part of the first Awareness, first education on the subject. Yeah, good for history buffs. You're walking around, or the parents of kids,

“that say, hey, you have to learn about this stuff, right?”

But yeah, that sounds amazing.

And sometimes you'll know because you're in places where you expect it to pop up, but it might be in a place where you don't expect it to pop up, and then I'll listen, you get a notification, and there's an opportunity to learn.

And it's really not the same content. It's important, it's really not the same content as the one that is on the platform, not that it's not coming from the initial same interview, but it's specifically geolocated.

So my point is as much as you can have a video of 15 minutes on the platform, on there, you're gonna have short videos of 40 seconds, 60 seconds, but not too long, really specifically at the spot where you stand.

And then eventually, it's gonna offer you also fun. You have the option of either keep going your way, or following that specific Holocaust survivors' journey. So wherever he or she ended up, where they go next, look, I'm totally aware of how

that this is a little treasure. All of these testimonies are a small treasure, and I haven't filmed these in order to just use them on a platform.

I wanna find always a new way

to be able to integrate it for this, for that. So yes, social media, yes, on a educational platform for a class, but if I'm always thinking outside of the block, so not only the app, so I don't know what's gonna come next,

but there's always something that we're doing with those. - Yeah, is there any way that you organize, I guess the talks of the interviews of these Holocaust survivors into different categories?

I organize them, obviously, also I would say, depending on the age. Some stories are tougher than others to listen to. - Correct, so I would do this. - I will do this. - Easy ratings, PG-13.

- Exactly, exactly. - Exactly, we have this, okay, we have this on the website,

that's one of the first things that you're gonna see.

And then we have another way, we pick, let's say keywords. So let's say David's keyword is gonna be Auschwitz, Berkkenau, forced labor, different things. Because not, it's another thing. It's obvious for me, but not for everybody.

Not every Holocaust survivor has gone through a concentration camp. - Yeah. - And you have many types of concentration camps. You have work camp, you have extermination camps.

So these are the ways also that you can classify them in somewhere in ghettos, somewhere hidden. There's many ways to put them in a kithigry,

“but at the same time, it's important for people to know”

that it's not because they have been into a concentration camp that necessarily what they're gonna hear is worse. I'm just thinking on top of my mind right now of a survivor who is from Florida.

Her name is Anita. Anita was in a ghetto. She was not in a concentration camp. She happens to have been in the same ghetto as my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, mother.

So she was in the Lvuf geto. And in the Lvuf geto, she's telling a story from the Lvuf geto with her cousin. And I'm not gonna spoil it. When my point is, she was not in a concentration camp,

but let me tell you, this is a punch in the gut. When you hear her story.

So that's why I always organize,

but there's also different ways. Some of the survivor will insist more on how they faced discrimination and hatred growing up, that the kids that were playing with them, the day before soccer suddenly was spit out of his face.

And so there are multiple subjects, but I can tell you, okay, this Holocaust survivor's testimony is amazing to explain how things have changed for him or her and how hatred allowed things to, just happen.

And then I would tell you, okay, this one has a wonderful story has a wonderful way also of telling you what is he's take on what's going on today around the world.

“What does he feel about anti-Semitism, hatred in general?”

And it really depends. But yes, we have keywords to organize all of this.

So that when you show up when you go on that platform,

you're not lost thinking, okay, which one should I watch? Like why should I look at this one more than this one? It's well explained. - Yeah, real quick, roughly how many of these have you done? - More than 100.

- More than 100, all right. - And I've done them in multiple languages. And on different ages. - Yeah, well, put, keep in mind, the youngest youngest I probably have interviewed

was at when I did in his late '80s. - Oh, okay. - They're all really, they're all, I mean, for the ones who are still alive, they're very, very old.

Imagine they say they're not busy, I mean. - That's a thing, that's my main issue. I'm running against time. - Yes. - Last week I was sitting with a Holocaust survivor, Walter.

104. - So sharp, so funny, completely that. But my point is, yeah, it's, so I'm running against time. - Very intense time, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, the only thing,

when we were having this conversation, I thought about, I was in Cambodia and there was the Kramer Rouge genocides, right? And I went to the, it's called TS1, the tool slung where they had the killing fields, right?

“And it's just so, so eye-opening and so sad, right?”

But it just reminded me of kind of the Holocaust. And I haven't been over and seen any of the concentration camps or any of that stuff, but I'll have to educate myself more and definitely looking forward to go to the new part of the memorial, yeah, of the memorial over here.

I asked everyone, what are you most excited about? Kind of, what projects you got cooking and tell us, what's going on? - Okay, what is the thing that excites me the most? When I'm in a classroom or when the video's that we've made

and they've been a classroom. Not just the videos, but the lessons, the lesson plans. Why? Because this is the only place where I can still see

and I see that they still have empathy

and feelings and an understanding of what's going on. And again, this is not a subject and I insist very much on this. This is not a subject that it has to do with the Jews. It's something that it has to do with human beings, okay?

“That was the worst thing that mankind was capable of.”

So really, for me is standing a classroom or know that this will be used in a classroom and this will be able to bring even more empathy and this will be able to teach this young generation how to be able to stand up against hatred

when they see it, to recognize it, when they see it. - When you look at the psychology of Hitler, how can you do this of all the people listening to him and just mindlessly just following it or the hatred that it, you know,

when you look at it from that standpoint, it's so interesting how we let ourselves slide. So so dark, right? It's insane, right?

And it's always insist, these were minority.

There was a minority that was loud in order to support him, but there was huge majority of people who just turned a blind eye. And these are the people that we need to wake up. - Yeah.

- People, young people need to know. There is no way you're being a bystander. Do not turn a blind eye. When you see something, say it, speak out. And no, I want this generation

to be a generation of bystanders, not bystanders. This is really the main message.

And again, whether we're talking about anti-Semitism,

racism, this, this, that, I don't care. Same story from me, okay?

“So don't turn a blind eye because that's what happened.”

The ones who allowed that to happen are the ones who just turned a blind eye and didn't comment on it. - Well, to end things on a more positive note, right? You said that you're originally from France,

so you've been here for 20 years. Your accent is like, perfect, right? There's no French accent, there are French accent. I can make the French accent come back if you want. He's going to sound a more realistic.

Let me say this, my kids, if you were to ask them, they would say like, oh, your accent is awful, man. You don't pronounce this well, blah, blah, blah. But when it comes to going to meet, if I have to go meet a teacher at school or whatever,

and let's see, my husband goes, oh, I'll go, they be like, no, no, no, no, mom goes. 'Cause he still has the very French accent. He's going to do this day, okay? So I don't know, maybe I have a good ear.

I know, I have a good ear. I speak five languages, so, and I'm telling you this helps. So French, Spanish, English, German, well, I include with the German, I include the Yiddish, okay, and I speak some Hebrew.

- All right, so that helps. - Yes, I'm sure it does. - I used to speak Italian, but it's automatically. But I am trying to have a good ear with each language. - Well, being in Miami and South Beach,

must, you know, you get the ability to practice a lot of different languages. - Yep. - Well, it's been a pleasure to have you all show. Thank you for joining us here.

And yeah, thank you also for joining us here.

“If you want to learn more about what she does”

and the Holocaust and her whole journey, then you have to tune into her, I've said, when it drops, it's legacy makers. But thank you for joining us here at another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast.

We'll see you next time, everyone. Cheers. (upbeat music)