As one member put it: “To live this long, to live this well, is a victory.” In 2005, Andrew Jacobs, a NY Times reporter, wrote about the lodge and realized that newspaper articles would not do justice to these remarkable people. Their inspirational dedication to living righteous and full lives was, as they saw it, the best revenge. Free Sign Up. Rooms at the Four Seasons Motel come with a cable TV and work desk. In the film, many of them talk about how they searched each other out, because no one else could understand, how the shorthand they used did not have to be fleshed out into lengthy explanations, which anyway would be too hard and too painful to make. Four Seasons Lodge English, Yiddish, Polish dialogue Production: A First Run Features release of a Four Seasons Project production in association with Rainlake Prods. Four Seasons Lodge screened on PBS stations and at festivals from WatchDocs in Poland to the UK Jewish Film Festival, and at more than 50 community venues, museums and universities. In the documentary “Four Seasons Lodge,” a group of Holocaust survivors spend their 26th summer at a Catskills bungalow colony. The film premiered theatrically at New York’s IFC Center and played at more than a hundred venues across the U.S. and Canada including the Quad Cinemas and Symphony Space in New York, Coolidge Corner in Boston, the Laemmle Cinemas in Los Angeles, The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Jacob Burns Film Center, Salt Lake City Film Center, Houston Museum of … I was doing a series for the Times then on summer life in the Catskills, and I sort of stumbled on this place.”. “There are plenty of survivors who took a different route,” he said. We proudly welcome the New Jersey Jewish News to our publishing company. Catskill Seasons Inn offers accommodations in Shandaken. It distracted them from the memory that was always hovering. !” It’s charming for us, but it was not at all charming for him. All donations for the production and distribution of Four Seasons Lodge are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for Four Seasons locations in Catskill, NY. Then it follows them upstate, to their own bungalows and the common spaces where they eat and dance and talk and daven. His interest, he said, went back to his childhood. That summer it appeared the lodge … This documentary is about a group of Auschwitz survivors, mostly Polish, who meet for summers at a Catskills lodge for over 25 years. He was in charge of maintenance, so in one sequence we viewers get to hear a series of residents call, yell, shout, practically yodel, “Hymie!” “Hymie! Minutes away from the best fishing hunting skiing and other outdoor activities in the Hudson Valley. We're refreshing the Catskill Seasons Inn. THEIR STORY has proven a draw among filmgoers as well: originally slated for a one-week run in New York City, Four Seasons Lodge will now show at … The Motel Four Seasons has a spacious property with a children’s playground and picnic area. Rooms at the Four Seasons Motel come with a cable TV and work desk. The bonds connecting them are extraordinarily and visibly strong. Where: Congregation Beth Sholom, 354 Maitland Ave. in Teaneck. Every summer, some Holocaust survivors, mostly Polish Jews, gather at the Four Seasons Lodge in the Catskill Mountains. And they were in their what? From the darkness of Hitler's Europe to the lush mountains of New York's Catskills, Four Seasons Lodge follows a community of Holocaust survivors who come together each summer at their beloved bungalow colony to dance, cook, fight and flirt - and celebrate their survival. This opens in a new window. The casually furnished rooms also include a … “Their lives afterward were stark and bitter. Hymie features prominently in the documentary. Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories No one was sitting in their bungalow alone. The way they talk, the way they interact — I didn’t have confidence in my ability to tell that story in a book. After being turned away from multiple hotel chains due to not being 21, I was becoming desperate and called here to see if they would possibly accommodate an 18 year old. Mr. Jacobs “pitched him the idea — we thought that he’d be perfect, because he was the same age and demographic as the people at the lodge” — he was Jewish, born in 1926 — “and because we wanted the verite style” that he and his brother had pioneered. “And in some ways having a good time was a distraction. “The old Borscht Belt is really fascinating. You don’t want to sit too long, because that’s when the demons would creep out.”. “I’m not at all a science guy,” he said; that’s a good thing, however, because he is able to translate science-speak into English for the vast majority of the rest of us, who also are not science guys. What: “The Four Seasons Lodge,” will talk about the documentary at, Where: Congregation Beth Sholom, 354 Maitland Ave. in Teaneck, How much: It’s free, but reservations are requested by March 2, For more information and to register: Go to www.cbsteaneck.org. Website: http://www.auburnseminary.org, Stewarding the Future: Rev. They were Holocaust survivors, people who had lived through hell and seen more and suffered more and lost more than the rest of us could begin to imagine seeing and suffering and losing. The film is about a Catskills bungalow colony whose residents all were Holocaust survivors. Members built a synagogue for Friday night services, dug out an Olympic-sized pool, paved two tennis courts and constructed a social hall. You see the formerly majestic crumbling old hotels, and an archipelago of bungalow colonies occupied by chasidim, like some 17th century shtetl. No one was crippled by the trauma. Looking for respite from city life, New Yorkers would head to … The documentary includes a lot of close-ups of faces and a lot of wider shots of the countryside. The Catskills 4 Seasons 140 program requires hikers to summit each of the 35 High Peaks in each of the four seasons. We see these survivors laugh, gossip, bask in the sun, tease each other, and often they seem happy. The film shows the countryside, which is rural without being particularly beautiful — parts of the Catskills absolutely are gorgeous, but not these parts. The Thomas Cole House, a National Historic Landmark is 10 miles away. Located in beautiful Greene County NY approximately 2.5 Hours north from New York City in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. Not that some of the people here weren’t dark and bitter,” he added. It begins with the survivors closing up their houses in Queens. But these guys consciously chose to be almost exclusively with other survivors, and who had a real gusto for life. And we started talking, and I was just smitten by him.”. Mr. Jacobs is not the son or grandson of survivors, but he is close to many of them, and he has done a great deal of research into their lives. Jacobs teamed up with Albert Maysles (Salesman, Grey Gardens), Kelly Sheehan and Matt Lavine to capture this remarkable living history before it is gone. Four Seasons Lodge was everything we wanted & more! It’s always a mystery, how some people survived the Holocaust, and how some of them managed to have good lives later on. I was looking forward to seeing the film after my cousin sent me a link to the trailer. Its director, Andrew Jacobs, will be at the screening, and he will talk about the film and answer questions after it’s shown.  And Ester Geizhals, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who spent many summers at the Four Seasons Lodge, will be there and answer questions as well. (Mike Nagle), Northern New Jersey’s Jewish Voice Since 1931. Jaime and Tosha Abramowitz as seen in “Four Seasons Lodge,” a film by Andrew Jacobs. (See box.). 7 Four Seasons Rd , Catskill, NY 12414-6805 is currently not for sale. Dr. Katharine Henderson Announces Transition from her Role as President of Auburn Seminary, located in New York City, Biden and Harris Call on Faith as a Source of Love of Neighbor and Commitments to Justice, Online Form - Website Footer Email Capture. FOUR SEASONS LODGE follows a group of Holocaust survivors, nearly all Polish Jews, who have spent 25 years summering together at an isolated rural compound in the Catskill Mountains of New York. “So then I thought that I would try it.”. He lived and worked in China from 2008 to 2016; since then he’s worked on international stories, and now he’s a science reporter. A Microcosm of the Afterlife: The Catskills’ Four Seasons Lodge. 8 reviews of Catskill Four Seasons Motel "I was hesitant about this place, I won't lie. This motel, in the Catskill Mountains of New York, features free Wi-Fi and an outdoor swimming pool. And also all the ailments that the ever-creative human body can inflict on people who have the temerity to grow old. !” “HYMIEEEE!!! “I went up there a lot when I was a kid, driving around in the summer, in the old Borscht Belt, and I had a house up there,” he said. Although he’d never made a movie before, “I thought it would be the best way to capture them. Menachem Wecker - 6 Tammuz 5768 – July 9, 2008. There’s so much adventuring to do in the Catskills. They created a refuge, a bungalow … Whether is was their cunning, their craftiness, their will — once they had the luck, there was something about them that allowed them to be able to survive multiple death camps…. You have a sense from them of ‘They wanted to stamp this out, so we should keep it going.’ I think there was an attachment to ritual and tradition and history, not so much the faith.”. Nature at your doorstep Discover The Catskills. Everyone at the bungalow colony is a survivor. There was a comfort in the rituals of Judaism. They survived the Holocaust and are facing the indignities of aging, but still, at the Four Seasons Lodge, they dance. Value. The casually furnished rooms also include a microwave and refrigerator. There are 134 bedrooms in a wide range of accommodations that include the main lodge, the two-story Guest House, (featured in "Mrs. Maisel"), … They cooked, swam, raised children, prayed together and safely swapped stories about the war years. “Most of them were in the camp of where was God? Ester Geizhals will join Mr. Jacobs and answer questions. Four Seasons Lodge is a counterintuitive and spiritually uplifting film about 100 Polish, Russian and Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust and, in 1979, bought 44 acres of land in the Catskills. “I would describe almost all of them as pretty Reform,” Mr. Jacobs said. They created a refuge, a bungalow colony with communal buildings called Four Seasons Lodge. This cabin was beautiful, spotlessly cleaned by Maria, & very spacious. Qualifying hikes must be accomplished during designated calendar seasons … If you would like to make a donation online, please click here: For more information, you can contact Laura Healy, Program Administrator at Auburn at: Phone: 212-870-3155 or 212-662-4315 Now, the mountains are seeing a big tourism revival. It waslarge enough for each couple to enjoy private time & large spaces for all of us to relax together. The daytime is fine, one of them says, but it’s at night that the terror returns. But they had energy and life. They all had lived through terrible trauma, but they embraced life with a gusto that helped them get through the rest of their lives. Four Seasons Lodge is a lyrical yet powerful mediation on love, aging, and the importance of friendship. 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