Ellisa
Cassuto introduces herself, Alan Berliner and his film Íntimate
Stranger about Joseph Cassuto
Elissa, a Cassuto from NYC mailed me and pointed to a remarkable documentary
about her grandfather Joseph Cassuto. From her mails I quote:
(..............)
My name is Ellisa Cassuto and I am 41 years old...My father's name is
Mark Cassuto and he is from Alexandria, Egypt. Dad has 2 younger brother's
and one older sister....
My first cousin, Alan Berliner is a documentary filmmaker....He did
a film about our paternal grandfather called "Intimate Stranger"....(if
you google that, you might get more info)*
*We googled
it and may refer you to www.alanberliner.com
The film 'Intimate stranger deals with Alan Berliner's maternal grandfather
Joseph Cassuto.
from the website we copy:
INTIMATE STRANGER (1991) explores the extraordinary life story of Berliner's
maternal grandfather Joseph Cassuto, a Palestinian Jew raised
in Egypt whose lifelong passion for Japan created confusion and conflict
in his post-World War II Brooklyn home. Following its premiere at the
1991 New York Film Festival, it was invited to many film festivals,
museums, universities and film showcases all over the world, winning
several awards and prizes, including an EMMY nomination by the National
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and a 1993 Distinguished Achievement
Award from the International Documentary Association. The Washington
Post called INTIMATE STRANGER "a brilliant, one of a kind film...
funny, probing... so wholly original in both style and substance as
to seem completely without precedent... intoxicating to watch... a spectacular
high wire feat by a master." ›› Alan Berliner
››
INTIMATE STRANGER (USA, 1991)
You've probably never heard of Joseph Cassuto, but by
the end of this film you may think that he was the most elusive, fascinating
and baffling man to have ever lived. Cassuto is filmmaker Alan Berliner's
maternal grandfather, a Palestinian Jew who was a cotton buyer for the
Japanese in Egypt prior to World War II. With Hitler's armies just miles
away from Alexandria, Cassuto's family is split in half. They reunite
in New York after the war, but Cassuto is restless there. He moves to
Japan to spend eleven months of the year, virtually abandoning his wife
and children in the U.S. while he pursues his business interests and
a life-long love affair with Japanese culture. Seventeen years after
his death, his grandson has constructed a poetic and emotional jigsaw
puzzle out of the voluminous memorabilia of his grandfather's life story.
What emerges is a curious legacy -- admiration and love from Cassuto's
Japanese business associates; resentment from his family. Depending
on who you ask, Cassuto was either a romantic adventurer or a shirker
of family responsibility; a man at the center of historic events or
a nobody.
"INTIMATE STRANGER," says Berliner, "walks
the fine line between sorting the dirty family laundry and polishing
the precious family jewel." Family members try to make sense of
it all in this witty, candid and cinematically inventive documentary
biography.
I am going
to see this film for sure!
Strange to view a Cassuto proudly standing before a mount Fuji setting,
as I myself as a toddler have been imprisonned with my mother in a concentration
camp of the Japanese, that were so dear to Joseph.
No hard feelings towards Joseph by the way, just noticing the absurdity
of the forces of life...
Rob C.
(view about
the vicissitudes of the Dutch Cassuto's in the Pacific war the Pacific
pages of the Cassuto documents)
Westerbork
Rob Cassuto and Minke payed a visit on July 30 to Westerbork in the
Dutch province of Drenthe.
Westerbork was the transit camp, 'Durchgangslager', for the 102.00 Dutch
Jews to be murdered in the death Camps.
Nowadays there is a memorial museum and the field of the barracks is
now a memorial field, stangely picturesque and accentuated by the radiotelecopes
in later times situated there.
Some pictures:
This sign was posted on the train cars headed for Polen
Here was the ramp from which every Tuesday, 1942- Sept. 1944, the train
with a new load of Jews and Gypsies left for Auschwitz or Sobibor
The memorial of 102.000 little pillars on the ancient appel square.
Together with the radiotelescope in the background this makes for a
picture with a very strange, intangible import
The impressive memorial of the two rail bars of the original track of
the Westerbork and eastward bound trains, the bars now ending in contorsion
and pointing to the sky.
In the background a piece of reconstructed barbed wire fence and a radiotelescope
of the world famous Westerbork radiotelescope system
Recollections
from the Synagogue in Florence
Dr. Enzo Nitzani
Vele tragische gebeurtenissen vonden plaats op de negende van de Joodse
maand Av, ofwel Tisja b'Av. Tisja
b'Av is een rouw- en vastendag. De voorschriften zijn dezelfde als die
voor Jom Kippoer. Naast niet eten en drinken ook niet wassen of leren
schoenen dragen.
Wat gebeurde er op die datum?
De
eerste Tempel werd verwoest,de tweede Tempel werd verwoest.
In
1492, vaardigde Koning Ferdinand van Spanje het besluit uit dat de Joden
het land moesten verlaten met de negende Av als uiterste datum, waarna
geen Jood meer in het land gevonden mocht worden.
De
Eerste Wereldoorlog, waarmee het neerwaartse proces naar de Sjoa inzette,
begon op Tisja B’av.
Ter gelegenheid van die dag heb ik het volgende fragment opgenomen.
Many tragic events took place on the ninth of the Jewish
month of Av,
Tisja b'Av.
It is a day of mourning and fasting on the same base as Yom Kippur.
What happened on Tisja b'Av?
The first and the second Temple were destroyed.
In 1492 King Ferdinand of Spain ordained the Jews to have left the country
at 9 Av.
The First World War began and set the downward process to the Shoah
in motion.
I post on this occasion the following fragment derived from the website
of Beth haTefutsoth:
The Great Synagogue of Florence, Italy.
Model in the Permanent Exhibition of Beth Hatefutsoth
Beth Hatefutsoth Visual Documentation Center
On the Ninth
of Av, 1938, I sat with my father and brother on low benches in a room
adjacent to the synagogue. We had already heard of the imminent racial
decrees. In the dark we sang AL HEYKhALI ChEVLI KENAChASh NOShEKh (“For
my Temple I ache like someone bitten by a serpent”). I was too young
to understand the note of anguish in the conversation between my father
and Prof. David Cassuto – he too was planning his immigration to
Eretz Israel – but I remember the sadness of the meeting to this
day.
Fate was
particularly cruel to the Cassuto family. After immigrating to Israel
and joining the ranks of the Hebrew University, his son Nathan –
a doctor and rabbi of Florence – was killed in Auschwitz. His daughter
in law Hannah – who was saved from the furnaces of Auschwitz –
was killed by a sniper when a convoy to the Hebrew University campus
on Mount Scopus was attacked by the Arabs in 1948.
This colourfull
lion is - so reads the caption - Cubism-inspired, and stands in Jerusalem
near the Italian synagogue on Hillel Street.
What does a lion sculpture do on this page?
It is created by Noa Cassuto.
Noa Cassuto is the daughter of David Cassuto Nzn,
a far relative of ours, belonging to the Cassuto's who remained in Italy
until emigrating to Israel in the last century.
I met David and Noa during my stay in Israel in 2000. View my story
about meeting
the Jerusalem Cassuto's
Also cousin David Gzn met the Jerusalem Cassuto's and he knows Noa pretty
well.
About the Jerusalem David Cassuto Nzn and his father Nathan and his
grandfather Umberto you may read more
here.
But now
the lion.
Noa has followed the art academy and
is nowadays living and working in Tel Aviv.
She cooperated in a project of the municipality
of Jerusalem to enliven the streets
with lion sculptures - especially
with a view to the children -
to be designed by a number of Israeli artists. More
about this project.
click on
the picture to see all the lions of the Jerusalem project 2003
another
Cassuto artist in Israel: Nir Cassuto
On the internet I came upon the website of an Israeli graphic studio
and on a page with cooperating illustrators I saw the pictures of Nir
Cassuto.
I picked
the one you see at the right.
It is an illustration of a childrens book by Rivka Cassuto. It's his
mother
He was so kind as to answer my mailed questions to tell something about
himself and his work:
"hei rob...
in
the matter of cassuto's questions...
first about me:
my age is 35 and i'm doing illustrations, product design, some art especially
drawings and some writing especially short stories and poems.
Rivka Cassuto is my mother and the illustrations are from one of several
children's books we did
together. Two are going to be published very soon.
As far
as i know i had a great great grand father who arrived from Florence
to Greece,
and my grand father Avraham Alberto Cassuto came to israel from Castoria
(in Greece).
i also know that he had a brother Elisha Cassuto who was an artist but
unfortunately died
while he was in the Greek army.
While i
was studying industrial design in Betzalel (art academy in Jerusalem)
i've met once
by chance the son of David Cassuto, Oded, who was studying architecture,
and probably he is the brother of Noa whom you mentioned before. (indeed
he is, RC)
My father Shmuel Cassuto has a great interest in history and a part
of it is also the cassuto matter, so once he also connected David Cassuto
and most of the knowledge i have about cassuto is based on them.
You can also contact my father, you are almost the same age and he would
be
happy to share cassuto information with you and can add some facts about
the
Greek branch.(I will surely do this, R.C.)
I already
looked at the cassuto site, i'm happy that you've picked the
balloons draw to it, more illustrations you can find in the site - http//www.illustrators.org.il
it would be nice to get the password and user name.
About him I found out he was occupied in the film business in Italia.
Most known feat:
He was producer of "La notte", the classic by Michelangelo
Antonioni.
I wonder what became of him and if he is still alive. I found a picture
of him and Sophia Loren, taken in the fifties (1955). There he appeared
to be in his forties.
Dear Rob,
i am the nephew of Emanuel Cassuto, who was born in Salonika in 1916
and died in Paris in 1994. He had a very interesting life, never told.
He has a daughter in Paris, two sons in Rome and a son in London whose
mother is japanese (again!).
Shalom Marco Morselli May 8 '06
Laurent
Cassuto and family
By e-mail Laurent Cassuto made contact with me. He lives in Brussels and
he proudly presents his first born son Simon on his picture website Casssuto
net. On the private page (password required) you may see one of the
pictures of his father , Laurent, his wife and son Simon and his mother.
Laurent belongs to the French branch and he describes this picture as
"La tribu Cassuto"
I will ask him to tell something more about himself and his family.
In the meantime I got some new pictures of son Simon (see below) at the
piano; which proves all branches of the Cassuto's demonstrate unusual
musical talent (f.e. see Alvaro
Cassuto)
Laurent
Cassuto and family
in Egypt whose lifelong passion for Japan created confusion and conflict
in his post-World War II Brooklyn home. Following its premiere at the
1991 New York Film Festival, it was invited to many film festivals,
museums, universities and film showcases all over the world, winning
several awards and prizes, including an EMMY nomination by the National
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and a 1993 Distinguished Achievement
Award from the International Documentary Association. The Washington
Post called INTIMATE STRANGER "a brilliant, one of a kind film...
funny, probing... so wholly original in both style and substance as
to seem completely without precedent... intoxicating to watch... a spectacular
high wire feat by a master." ›› Alan Berliner
››
another
Cassuto artist in Israel: Nir Cassuto
Emanuele
Cassuto
