Kissinger to deliver opening remarks at UF documentary screening in Lincoln Center

May 9, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Henry Kissinger, secretary of state for Richard Nixon and former diplomat, will deliver the opening remarks May 17 at a University of Florida Documentary Institute screening at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The documentary “Angel of Ahlem” follows Vernon Tott, a dying World War II veteran, as he races against time to find Holocaust survivors he photographed 60 years earlier at a slave labor camp outside Hanover, Germany.

Kissinger and Tott were members of the Army’s 84th Infantry and arrived at Ahlem only a few days apart. In 1998, Kissinger wrote Tott to thank him for sending the photographs he took on the day of liberation.

“Whenever Vernon found someone, we all cheered,” Documentary Institute Co-Director Churchill Roberts said. “And whenever he went to the doctor about his health, we held our breaths.”

Tott, who lived in Iowa, died two years ago.

Roberts worked on the 90-minute documentary for more than three years with his longtime Documentary Institute partners Sandra Dickson, Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson. After the Lincoln Center screening, they plan to enter the film into film festivals and find a distributor. Five of their films have been shown nationally on programs such as “Independent Lens” aired by the Public Broadcasting Service.

“Angel of Ahlem” presents a new twist on the Holocaust, which has been covered extensively in films, Roberts noted. The story’s historical dimensions — using a present-day setting to revisit the past and told through the eyes of a liberator — intrigued the institute.