On July 17, 2025 the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York screened Lilac/Bez, a short experimental documentary co-created by WCHC Senior Research and Programming Associate Laura Morowitz. The film follows Laura and two of her daughters, Isabelle and Olivia Schechter, as they travel through Poland, visiting the former shtetls of Chmielnik and Stopnica, where Laura’s grandparents were born. Eva Jutkowitz and Julius Morowitz left Poland in 1921. The communities of their shtetls, which were majority Jewish for hundreds of years, were murdered in Treblinka.
Debuting at the Garden State Film Festival in March of 2025, the film takes the form of a photo-film, a choice that highlights the silence, beauty of nature, and loss. “In photos everyone is on the same level,” notes Professor Morowitz, “the living and the dead meet together in this static form.” The film was inspired by a long-lost photo she received of her grandfather and his siblings as children, standing in front of the woods of Chmielnik, with her grandfather’s sister holding a bouquet of wild lilacs. Morowitz sent the photo to her friend Marek Każmierczak, a Professor of Cultural Studies in the Film and Media Department of Adam Mickiewicz University, with a strong interest in Holocaust Studies. Każmierczak suggested making the film and went on to be the producer. He brought in Mikołaj Jazdon, a scholar of Polish cinema and documentaries, who directed the film and suggested its form. Jazdon invited renowned Polish cinematographer and photographer Piotr Jaxa, who worked closely with Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. The photos he produced have an astonishing beauty and depth. A young editor from Łódz Film School, Damian Parobczy, did the enormous task of sorting through the 2,000 photographs and editing the film.The film also includes the creative input of Morowitz and her daughters. Olivia, a musician and singer is responsible for the film’s haunting musical theme and the original song at the end. Isabelle’s and Laura’s writings and poetry contributed to the film’s mood and content. In Polish the word "Bez" means both "lilac", and "without".
“The film is a labor of love and loss.” notes Morowitz, “Together the three of us shared this journey with Marek, Mikołaj and Piotr, discovering things together and doing our best to honor the life that once animated these communities and their unfathomable loss.” The journey took them through many small destroyed shtetls, Treblinka, Polish archives, ruined synagogues and the POLIN museum in Warsaw. The town of Chmielnik has beautifully restored its former synagogue and now houses a museum dedicated to its Jewish History. Prior to filming Morowitz did extensive research in the YIVO archives and in libraries.
In May of 2026 the film was shown in Poznan, Poland to a packed audience; it will be shown at Auschwitz in November and will also play this fall in Vienna, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the State University of New York at Purchase. The film was supported by grants from the Chai Society, the WCHC, the Hadassah-Brandeis Research Institute and Adam Mickiewicz University. It was executive produced by Joel H. Schechter.
To read more about the film:
https://uniwersyteckie.pl/nauka/lilac-bez-historia-jednego-zdjecia
Laura Morowitz, Olivia Schechter and Isabelle Schechter at the Q&A following the screening of Lilac/Bez at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, July 17,2025
Marek Każmierczak, Mikołaj Jazdon, Laura Morowitz and Piotr Jaxa at the screening of their film at the CZ Kamek, Poznan, Poland, May 26, 2025