LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 39 Light In the Darkness Return to Auschwitz: The Survival of Vladimir Monk is an Emmy-award winning documentary sharing the story of retired SUNY Plattsburgh professor and Holocaust survivor Vladimir Munk. When Vladimir Munk was a young boy in Pardubice, Czech Republic, he would climb upon massive piles of coal in a sugar factory yard neighboring where he lived. This is one of Munk's fondest childhood memories, he and his friends spending many happy years playing Hide-and-Seek, referring to the mountain of coals as a "personal playground." He enjoyed bringing home beets that fell off the factory's carts so his mother could boil them into a syrup. He grew up with two loving parents, Karel and Hermina, and a beloved fox terrier named Cigi. That boy would eventually live in Prague where he earned his masters and doctorates in sciences before creat- ing a number of patents. He married, had two sons, became a professor at SUNY Plattsburgh, and is enjoying his later years in Plattsburgh NY. This is the story Munk has often told of his life. It is the story he prefers to be told. But in this lifetime, the paths of perfect strangers can cross with our own in such a way that the lesser known stories of our lives are brought into the light. And be- cause Munk's path crossed with the paths of Julia Canepa and Paul Frederick, the world learned about a teenage boy who survived the horrors of the Holocaust. It is a story he rarely brings up. But nearly seventy-five years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945, Munk has shared his story, a story captured in the documentary Return to Auschwitz: The Survival of Vlad- imir Munk which was co-produced by Frederick and Canepa along with Bruce Carlin. Munk had shared his story here and there in prior years, but Return to Auschwitz was the first time his story would become widely known. Frederick, Canepa, and Carlin knew the documentary would be special. However, no one could have predicted that on June 10, 2023 it would ulti- mately win an Emmy. Frederick sat down with me to share how Munk's story be- came a documentary and the experience of sharing his story with the world. By Rhiannon Berry Adsit

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