As we honor the memory of those brutally murdered by the Nazis on Yom Hashoah, Sparks Next presents Mira, featuring previously unreleased audio of the legendary Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. A poignant tribute to the 1.5 million children killed during World War II, Mira was composed by musician and songwriter Cecelia Margules in memory of her maternal aunt Mira who, was a beautiful child who loved to sing and dance and brought great joy to her family.
She was taken as a child from the Lodz ghetto together with her family and sent to her death in the gas chambers. The song was originally performed at a 1984 concert by Carlebach at the Brown’s Hotel in the Catskills, with Reb Shlomo calling Margules’s young niece onto the stage as he sang Mira in memory of the aunt whose name she carried.
Directed and produced by Daniel Finkelman, written and produced by Chaya Greenberg, and co-directed by Aharon Orian, Mira spans the decades, weaving an exquisite duet between Reb Shlomo and the incomparable talent of Dudu Fisher. Vintage cinematography by David Orian takes viewers back in time to 1984 with a reenactment of the concert and shows both war-torn and contemporary Lodz through Fisher’s eyes. Cast in the role of a witness to history, Fisher sees Mira and her family rounded up by the Gestapo and herded onto a cattle car as they are sent to their untimely deaths at Auschwitz.
“When Shlomo heard Mira’s story he wanted to tell it very much and when he did, you felt it,” said Margules. “The fact that you could still hear him speaking and singing when so much of the tape had been destroyed was an amazing thing.”
The number of remaining Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle with every passing year and the coronavirus outbreak has further chipped away at their numbers, making it more important than ever to pass the torch to the next generation.
“More than ever, during these stressful days,” said Margules, “we need Shlomo Carlebach’s inspiration, his heart and soul as he did in his lifetime, and his innate ability to lift and help a broken spirit."
