Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film
Glenn Kurtz's award-winning historical memoir chronicles the remarkable discovery of a brief 16mm color film shot by his grandfather in 1938—the only known moving images of the Jewish community of Nasielsk, Poland before its destruction. This critically acclaimed book, named one of the best books of 2014 by NPR, The New Yorker, and The Boston Globe, now serves as the basis for the documentary Three Minutes: A Lengthening.
A Historical Detective Story
When Kurtz found his grandfather David Kurtz's old family film in a Florida closet, he uncovered more than vacation footage of Paris and the Swiss Alps. Hidden within the reels was rare color 16mm footage capturing the vibrant Jewish town of Nasielsk during a 1938 sightseeing trip—just one year before Nazi occupation. Of the town's three thousand Jewish inhabitants, fewer than one hundred survived the Holocaust.
Connecting Survivors to Lost History
After restoring the deteriorating film, Kurtz embarked on an extensive research journey across the United States, Canada, England, Poland, and Israel. His investigation led him through archives, cemeteries, and even an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. The breakthrough came when a young woman recognized her grandfather as a thirteen-year-old boy in the footage posted on the Holocaust Museum's website. This discovery connected Kurtz with Moszek Tuchendler, now Maurice Chandler of Florida, whose detailed memories at age eighty-six provided crucial insights into pre-war Nasielsk.
Through Chandler's recollections, Kurtz located six additional survivors, including a ninety-six-year-old woman who appears in the film standing beside her future husband. These seven survivors' interconnected stories form the heart of this meticulously researched narrative.
Painstakingly Assembled Historical Record
Drawing from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland reconstructs the rich, complex life of a Jewish community on the brink of extinction. What began as a travel souvenir became the most important visual record of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. Kurtz transforms three minutes of home movie footage into a monument to a lost world—an exploration of memory, loss, and survival that avoids sentimentality while honoring those who perished and those who endured.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in paperback format, this genealogical and historical work offers readers an intimate window into Eastern European Jewish life in the 1930s and demonstrates how a single family artifact can illuminate an entire community's forgotten history.
