1995 - CBS: This Morning

 

 

Int:    Leonard Nimoy has a pretty impressive resume. He created one of TV's most memorable characters Star Trek's Mr. Spock and you may remember him as Paris in Mission Impossible. He has also directed major movie hits like Three Mean and a Baby and two of the Star Trek films. Now he is starring as a Holocaust-survivor in the Turner-network film Never Forget.

             (Clip of Never Forget)

 

Int:    Leonard Nimoy joins us along with Mel Mermelstein who's story is the basis for the movie.

         Good morning gentlemen.

 Leonard Nimoy:          Good morning.       

 Mel Mermelstein.:       Hello.

 Int:    (to Leonard) How did you come upon Mel's story?

 LN:    I was told about it by a lawyer who was doing some pro bono work on the case, a lawyer in Washington DC. And he introduced my partner and I to a gentleman in southern California who know Mel. And we went and met him and heard the story. And it seemed like a story worth telling

 

Int:    The story is literally about a man who survives the Holocaust, comes from Hungary and out of Auschwitz, ends up very successful in America, tells a lot of his story to school children and … Mel, pick it up from there a little bit

 

MM:   Well I got a letter addressed to me, a personal letter, offering me a $50,000 reward to prove that Jews were gassed – gassed - in gas chambers in Auschwitz. A if I did not come forward to prove that they would expose me to the mass media as a liar. And you see one who survived Auschwitz, and one who has been presenting himself as a death camp survivor to students in high schools and in colleges. It was quite frightening to me that they would expose me to the mass media as a liar as a hoaxer. And furthermore I also felt that I had made a promise to my father at Auschwitz. And so had my father made to me and my brother to me and to my father, that if any one of us will survive we will tell what they did to us.

Int:    The movie, to me, is so compelling because here is this man who, at every turn, is told no to fight this fight. (To Leonard) What compelled you so much to……. because you're also executive producer. You not only played Mel you're also the executive producer of this. What compelled you to feel that this story had to be told?

LN:  “It's a very kind story. We've all seen stories about the Holocaust. And I think that if I'd been approached to act in or direct or produce another Holocaust story, I probably would have said I wouldn't know what to do with the subject matter. We've seen the documentary footage. But this is very a sunny Southern California story where the long arm reaches out and says: We're still here and we still want to deal with you on this subject. And here's a man who moved away from that, created an entire new family, a new business, a new life in southern California, and along they come and say : We have business to do with you. And as William Cox's lawyer says in our show these are like people who come and knock on your door like thugs. Who knock on your door in the middle of the night and say come on out and protect yourself.”

  

 

Int:    Emotional and intellectual thugs.

 LN:    Yes exactly. And very much on-going. Very current. In spite of the fact that they lost this particular round in court. They're still on-going.

 Int:    Did it shock you to find this sort of professionalism in the manner in which they operate?

 LN:    I think that's the thing that's most frightening of all. I can remember as a child growing up in Boston, seeing anti-Semitic literature that was gross. It was unpalatable. You didn't want to touch it. It was poorly mimeographed on cheap paper and caricature cartoon drawings and so forth. The literature of these organisations of this particular organisation is very slick. It's very well printed, very well bound. It looks like a historical text book on the subject. And yet it's a total denial of historical reality. They play fast and loose with historical fact.

Int (to MM):      Another part of this story is how your family struggles with your own drive to keep the story alive.

 MM:   Well, I think that's significant because you have to really recognise the fact that they are Americans. I'm an American since 1946 when I arrived here as a legal immigrant... and then strived to put my life together and finally build a business and marry and have children; and they're American kids. And here they are, they attend school, and they hear all these things. All these diversions and all these lies.

 Int:    And they wondered about you. They wondered was Dad for real, and is this story so important that it needs to be told?

 MM:   Well, the reason for that is that as one who survived the death camp, I tried to spare them, you know? And I tried to spare the American people as well, my friends. I tried not to tell them, to offend them even because it is awesome to learn what man can do to his fellow man.

 

Int:    And is still trying to do, in fact, as pointed in this story. Mel … Leonard … thank you both, very, very much. The film is more then well worth watching.

 LN:    Thank you. We do appreciate that. Thank you very much.