A Small Act directed by Jennifer Arnold, HBO Documentary film, 88 minutes.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Hilde Back, a native of Germany, found refuge in Sweden in 1940 from the Holocaust. Believing ever since that people should take an interest in the affairs of other countries, she decided to contribute $15 per month to a charity that would pay for the education of a child in Kenya.
It was one of numerous small commitments that Back made throughout her life – the lesson of the importance of tzedaka burning strongly within her as the beneficiary of other people’s kindness. Her parents, unable to accompany her to neutral Sweden, did not survive. Her father died in Theresienstadt, her mother in Auschwitz.
Back did not keep track of the Kenyan child whom her money supported, but the child always wondered about her. He wondered when her money helped to pay for secondary school, which is not free in Kenya. He wondered when he went on to University. He continued to wonder when he was accepted on scholarship to Harvard University Law School.
After returning to Kenya, Chris Mburu established the Hilda Back Educational Fund for his and surrounding villages located well within Kikuyu tribal territory. He explains in the documentary that if Back had not underwritten his expenses, he would not have been able to proceed with his education. His life would have been mired in the poverty, ignorance, and joblessness that grips rural Kenya. But because of Back’s “small act,” he ultimately was able to become an official in the anti-discrimination department of the United Nations, a man whose job is to aid victims of discrimination and ethnic violence.
There are poignant moments in the documentary after Mburu tracks down Back and tells her of the fund he has established in her name, and how, in essence, he has decided to pay his debt to her “forward” –even as she paid forward her debt to her rescuers. And how ironic it was, that Back was a Holocaust Survivor and Mburu now was working internationally to make certain that genocides do not happen again.
On Mburu’s invitation, Back travels from Sweden to his village in Kenya, where she is given a royal welcome and made an honorary Kikuyu elder. It is a surprise for her that her contributions could have created so many ripples, or that she—a modest woman—could be held in such high esteem.
Unfortunately, this charming story is set against the backdrop of tribal violence in 2003 between Luo and Kikuyu, both of whose passions were inflamed in a presidential election that ran along tribal lines. Violence, even genocide, seemed very possible in Mburu’s own country, a stark reminder of just how important education is. Uneducated people, Mburu argues, are easily manipulated by rumor, are quite ready to believe lies, and often can be prompted to violence. So the scholarships paid for by the Hilda Back Educational Fund, greatly significant in the lives of the recipients, can have an even greater impact on society, by helping to generate newer, more rational voices.
As the documentary unfolds, we watch three students—two girls and a boy – studying, even praying, for the chance to go to the ninth grade. With an education, they might be able to help their families, including one mother whose body is racked with illness she cannot afford to have adequately treated.
Without an education, what kind of future can these three have? The girls shed tears at they consider the prospect of failing to do well enough in the national exams to qualify for a scholarship. Typically, within two years of completing eighth grade – and not going on to high school – such Kikuyu girls become married and pregnant, with the whole cycle starting again.
A Small Act will be screened twice during the San Diego Jewish Film Festival—at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17, at the Carlsbad illage Theatre, and at 10:30 a.m., Friday, Feb. 18, at the Lawrence Family JCC.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World