Three Palm Trees Productions
The Team:
Deborah Fletcher Blum: co-director, writer, producer
Photography by Roland Ray/Schwäbische Zeitung
Artist, educator and filmmaker, Deborah Fletcher Blum grew up watching foreign and independent films at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles, a chain of art house theaters founded by her grandfather Kurt Laemmle and his brother Max in 1937. She has a B.A. in English from UCLA, and studied painting, photography and history at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. She completed a documentary project on Dominican refugees in Providence and taught overseas as a Waldorf teacher in Kenya. ​She also taught English and Art in Los Angeles, and founded 7811 Art Gallery.
In 2010, she began researching her family history, and in 2014 began filming interviews with families rescued by Carl Laemmle, who had been located in California.
WARREN I. BLUM: co-director, producer
A lawyer, composer, filmmaker and storyteller, Warren grew up in West Hollywood, graduated from Sonoma State University and Loyola Law School, Suma Cum Laud. He had a solo law practice in Northern California and in Los Angeles, California, where he specialized in 1031 exchanges.
He produced, director and edited several short films, including Holocaust Souls Return, and, as a composer, scored films, including Donald and Dot Clock Found Dead in Their Home (Dances With Films, 2002.)
Warren enjoys playing piano, taking photographs and walking mountain trails. He lives in Hollywood with his wife Deborah and their cat Moonlight.
Photography by Roland Ray/Schwäbische Zeitung
SANDY EINSTEIN:
Associate Producer
A retired promoter of the rock bands Journey, Mr. Big and Europe, Sandy Einstein lives in Northern California. He has been instrumental in creating awareness about Carl Laemmle's humanitarian rescue efforts during the Nazi Era. His father, Hermann Einstein, received an affidavit from Carl Laemmle and arrived in the US in 1938.
Sandy has worked tirelessly with writers and journalists to publish articles chronicling Carl Laemmle's rescue efforts. Articles have appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian magazine, Tablet magazine, the Jewish Journal, and the Daily Express. In 2016, Sandy donated his father's letters to The Carl Laemmle Present Exhibit in Stuttgart, Germany. He also contributed research material to this film.
WENDY SUE LAMM: Cinematographer
Wendy Sue Lamm is a two-time World Press Photo Award and Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and filmmaker. Her visuals are striking by their ability to express the duality of both objective yet profound artistic statements simultaneously. Her photographs and films are shown in theaters, museums and galleries worldwide. Her first book, From the Land of Miracles, published in three translations in Europe and North America, is a figurative and artistic reflection on the fragile balance of the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians in peace and in war. Within days of its release American Photo Magazine and the Scandinavian Book Fair in Gothenburg, Sweden, selected From the Land of Miracles as one of the best books of the year.
After earning a BA in Humanities from the University of California at Berkeley, Ms. Lamm accepted photographic assignments that spanned America—from the border towns of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico; to metropolitan daily newspapers and magazines in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. As a member of the Los Angeles Times team reporting on the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, California, her photographs were part of the coverage that earned the Times a Pulitzer Prize. Subsequently, she was based in Jerusalem, Paris and Stockholm as a photojournalist for the French wire service Agence France-Presse, and then European photo agencies and her work was seen in most major international publications. She currently lives in her native Los Angeles as a visual creator in the many aspects of film, video and photography.
DR. MICHAEL BERENBAUM: Historical Consultant
Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as Deputy Director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute.
Dr. Berenbaum played a leading role in the creation of the USHMM and the content of its permanent exhibition. He served as president of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and and currently is Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, located at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, California.
He co-produced One Survivor Remembers: The Gerda Weissmann Klein Story, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1996, and an Emmy Award. He was the chief historical consultant for Last Days, which also won an Academy Award. Berenbaum was historical consultant for History Channel's The Holocaust and was executive producer of Swimming in Auschwitz and a consultant for Defiance and Uprising, among other Holocaust-related films and documentaries. Berenbaum is the founding partner of Berenbaum Jacobs Associates, a firm designing Museums, Special Exhibitions, Memorials and Educational Centers. He lives in Los Angeles and travels widely promoting Holocaust education.