Preproduction

The trip was planned for right after Pesach, so deliberations started midwinter. This was critical, as the success of such a production relies on carefully planned logistics. Filming on location in Europe leaves little room for error — there is no opportunity to “go back and get another shot” — so everything needed to be captured properly the first time.

Over the course of several weeks, we fleshed out the plan. We suggested having noted tour guide and historian Yehuda Geberer accompany Rabbi Bochner. He could provide the more detailed accounts, leaving Rabbi Bochner to focus on the emotion of the moments.

Due to time constraints, we concentrated the trip in the Vilna area. While this meant forgoing visits to the kevarim of some gedolei Yisrael in other regions, Yehuda suggested an alternative: to include visits to several Holocaust sites where thousands of children were tragically murdered — locations that carry their own emotional resonance and align with the theme.

Plans and Planes

Filming such a trip needed a seasoned cinematographer, someone cool under pressure who wouldn’t miss a beat. There would be speeches at each location, so we wanted a lockdown camera on the speaker the whole time, but we also wanted more cinematic handheld shots as well as overhead drone shots. All of these would be happening simultaneously, and care would have to be taken not to get the cameraman in the drone shot and vice versa. In addition, the packed itinerary, and the sheer amount of travel, meant that we wouldn’t have the luxury of hours of setup — it would be more like minutes at each location.

I reached out to a skilled Israeli cinematographer, and we spent hours on the phone running through the logistics. But a week before the shoot he gave me a call.

“I’m assuming you guys heard about the Houthi missiles that landed near Ben-Gurion? Flights are pretty sketchy, I’m not sure you can count on me.”

Gulp. Senior Production Manager Moshe Niehaus quickly reached out to a cinematographer from England; we had worked with him before, and he graciously agreed to take the last-minute job.

Live Location

Filming live on location means the shoot is less controlled. On the plus side, this can make it feel more authentic and organic, but it also means we never quite know what’s going to happen. In Kovno, we were filming Rabbi Bochner telling a tragic yet inspiring Holocaust story with the Kovno Ghetto’s last standing house as his backdrop.

At the climax of the story, Rabbi Bochner stood, arms outstretched, completely immersed in the emotional narrative: “And the child rebels, Totty I want chocolate, Totty I want candy, and—”

Suddenly, the front door suddenly swung open, and a very irritated Lithuanian matron stormed out. Apparently, she didn’t realize when she bought the home that she was signing up to live in a tourist attraction, and she was none too pleased with our invasion. Luckily, our local guide acted as a translator and smoothed things over. She allowed us to finish the shoot, but she stayed outside on the front stoop, keeping a suspicious eye on us as we filmed. We had to adjust the angle of the lens to make sure she wasn’t in the frame.

Weathering the Storms and Syncs

One of the big challenges of filming outdoors was the unpredictable weather. The schedule was packed, so at each stop we had to either film or move on — we couldn’t wait for better conditions. That meant several shoots happened in the rain, and if you look closely, you’ll see people in the background with umbrellas. Thankfully, the rain wasn’t too heavy, and our speakers were able to stand out in the open.

Wind was more of an issue. We clipped small lavalier mics to the speakers’ shirts to get clean audio, but the camera mic struggled in the wind. The problem? Lav mics record separately from the camera, and normally we sync them using the camera’s audio as a reference. But with the wind garbling that track, the auto-sync just didn’t work.

In the end, we called on the cinematographer. Since he’d been on set and knew which clips belonged where, he could match the audio to the footage by eye — literally lining up lip movements to sound. It was painstaking work, but he pulled it off.

Visual Storytelling

Once we had all the footage lined up at our studio, it was time to start building the segments that would make up the full feature. Alongside the speeches and stories from Rabbi Bochner and Yehuda Geberer, we’d also left a mic on Rabbi Bochner for much of the trip. He kept up an almost running commentary, helping the viewer experience each location, rather than just hear about it. As Yehuda put it, Rabbi Bochner was in a “different zone” — completely immersed in the emotion of each place, almost unaware of the cameras.

Our editors spent days combing through the material, pulling the most powerful moments, and the cinematographer had captured stunning visuals, which we used to B-roll much of the content. But something was missing. Several stories called for more detailed visuals: the ger tzedek Avrohom ben Avrohom crying in his cell, a child torn from his father in the Kovno ghetto — scenes that would bring the emotion to life. The problem? These shots didn’t exist. Reenacting them would have been a costly enterprise that would likely feel inauthentic.

This was about the time when the production world began experimenting with artificial intelligence in earnest, and postproduction manager Usher Weldler used various AI programs to try to create the right look. With careful prompts to ensure the men’s heads would be covered, the women modest, and the settings period-accurate, he was able to create several scenes that didn’t just support the story, but completed it, and what began as a beautifully shot speech became a full, immersive narrative.

Callback

We already had several hours of content to utilize for the video, but Boruch felt we needed one more element to round the production out. He arranged for us to interview several Holocaust survivors in their Boro Park homes. It was a sobering experience: The youngest survivor we interviewed was 95 years old, the oldest just over 100. And even 80 years after liberation, it was clear they still carried with them the pain, the loss, the total upheaval of everything they once knew.

Listening to speeches, even at the sites themselves, was powerful. But these men had been there. We were trying to recreate stories — they had lived them. Boruch was right. Their voices tied it all together. The mission of helping couples start families took on new meaning as we began to really understand the magnitude of what we lost.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1072)