PBS Documentary ‘How Saba Kept Singing’ Premiered on PBS and YouTube

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton produced the documentary How Saba Kept Singing. On April 18, it premiered on PBS to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day. On April 19, it became free to watch on YouTube. With a rise in antisemitism, the creative team wanted to reach a wider audience. The documentary revolves around protagonist David Wisnia and his grandson. 

David thought that he survived Auschwitz because he could sing. As a child, he sang in the synagogue’s choir. Fellow prisoner Zippi Spitzer completed a scale model of the camp. While conducting research, she met David. The two promised to find each other if they survived. Unfortunately, they lost contact. His grandson, Avi, learned that music brought people together. 

Avi asked questions about his family’s history. David realized that something might have secretly altered the course of his life. On the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, the pair traveled to Poland. The documentary reunited David and Zippi after seventy years. They shared their memories with viewers and each other. 

The story went viral when director Sara Taskler pitched it to the New York Times. Taskler met the Wisnia family as a child. Eric Wisnia is her family’s rabbi. She learned about the comfort of music, art, and human connections. While learning more about his family, she saw, “examples of good people standing up in times of injustice.”

The documentary blended animation with live-action shots. For the drawings, the palette color consisted of many blue shades. In one sketch, a pale, bald boy wore striped pajamas. Guards stood beside him. During a voiceover, David said that the guards told him to sing. The film cut to a sketch of a guard lowering his sunglasses. This drawing featured darker colors.

For a second, the film cut to David’s face. In German, he sang a few bars. The documentary went back to the cartoon boy. David continued to sing in a voiceover. The animation slowly zoomed in on the boy’s face. Viewers saw footage from 2015.

David and Avi walked around Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim, Poland. David spoke about his first job at the camp. He picked up the dead bodies and put them in a small wagon. He said that if he had to do this task long-term, he “would have never survived.” Again, the film cut to the animated, blue boy.

Still in the striped pajamas, he stood in a field. The viewer saw him through two thin lines of barbed wire. The horizontal lines intersected the screen. David hummed again. In another live-action shot, he showed Avi where he sang. The wooden building had long windows and a grim interior. S.S. men had watched and listened. David said, “Music is life.”

Viewers saw the wooden bunk where David slept. All those years ago, he carved his name into the wall. In the shot, Avi held up a flashlight so they could see the inscription. David seemed shocked that it still remained. Together, they hoped to fill in the missing memories.

Avi reflected on the experience as well. Growing up, he only knew pieces of his grandfather’s story. However, he always thought the story consisted of more events. “In order to keep going, he had to forget everything in his past,” said Avi. Viewers saw photographs of Zippi as a child.

She wore a large bow and a pretty dress. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives lent her interview to the documentary. She spoke about her history. While in the Czech Republic, Zippi learned to play the mandolin. She became the only child musician in an otherwise adult orchestra. Because of the concentration camps, she could not continue. 

The film showed historical footage of Nazis marching. Then, viewers saw a grainy wide shot of men and women in striped pajamas. They huddled together at a barbed wire fence. David and Zippi said that people constantly passed away. She said, “Even healthy ones didn’t know if they would die tomorrow.” David discussed how he met Zippi.

The film showed an animated girl. She walked across the screen in a beige dress. The Nazis captured her as one of Auschwitz’s first prisoners. They forced her to keep records and design a color-coded prisoner identification system. The documentary cut to a photograph of her, in which she stood on a ladder. She thought of art as therapeutic. “I was always creative. I’m an artist and a musician,” said Zippi.

Several media groups worked on the documentary. Retro Report, Burnt Umber Productions, and Hiddenlight Productions helped to produce the documentary. The WNET Group presented the motion picture on PBS. “There is urgency and poignancy in the first-hand accounts of survivors,” said WNET Group Executive Producer Lesley Norman.

PBS created educational materials and discussion guides. With these notes, classrooms and other groups can host their own screenings. “Like all my projects, I like to talk a serious story and find a way to make it uplifting,” said Taskler.