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The Dominican Republic was a haven for Jews fleeing the Nazis. A museum project could tell that story.
SOSUA, Dominican Republic (JTA) — Sitting inside a small wood-frame shul just around the corner from Playa Alicia, where tourists sip rum punch while watching catamarans glide by, Joe Benjamin recounted one of the most uplifting but often forgotten stories of Jewish survival during the Holocaust.
“I was bar mitzvahed right here,” he said, pointing to a podium at the front of the sanctuary in La Sinagoga de Sosua. It was built in the early 1940s to meet the spiritual needs of about 750 German and Austrian Jews.
At the time, the Dominican Republic was the only country in the world that offered asylum to large numbers of Jewish refugees, earning the moniker “tropical Zion.”
Benjamin, 82, is president of the Jewish community of Sosua and one of only four surviving second-generation Jews remaining in this touristy beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. His parents were part of the unconventional colony of Jewish immigrants who established an agricultural settlement between 1940-47 on an abandoned banana plantation overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
“When I talk about that, I get goosebumps,” Benjamin said. “This is a distinction that the Dominican Republic has. It was the only country that opened its doors to Jews.”
Joe Benjamin, president of the Jewish Community of Sosua, inside the sanctuary of La Sinagoga. (Dan Fellner)
At the 1938 Evian Conference in France, attended by representatives of 32 countries to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wanting to flee Nazi persecution, the Dominican Republic announced it would accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. About 5,000 visas were issued but fewer than 1,000 Jews ultimately were able to reach the country, which is located on the same island as Haiti, about 800 miles southeast of Miami.
Benjamin was born in 1941 in Shanghai, the only other place besides the Dominican Republic that accepted large numbers of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Shanghai, then a divided city not under the control of a single government, did not require a visa to enter. About 20,000 Jewish refugees immigrated there, including Benjamin’s parents, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939.
In 1947, with a civil war raging in China, Benjamin’s father realized the country “was getting a little difficult” and looked for another place to raise his two children.
“I think my father read it in a newspaper – there was a Jewish refugee colony in the Dominican Republic,” he says. “My father had no idea where that was, but he said, ‘I’m going there.’”
Benjamin’s family took a ship from China to San Francisco, a train to Miami, and then flew into Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital city. At that time, the city was officially called Ciudad Trujillo after the country’s dictator, Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.
Photos of some of the 750 Jewish refugees who settled in Sosua in the 1940s on display at the Gregorio Luperon International Airport in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. (Dan Fellner)
Historians suggest the Dominican dictator’s motives in accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees at a time when so many other countries — including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom — turned their backs were fueled more by opportunism than altruism. It’s believed that Trujillo wanted to improve his reputation on the world stage following the 1937 massacre of an estimated 20,000 Black Haitians by Dominican troops. Furthermore, Trujillo liked the idea of allowing a crop of mostly educated immigrants who would “whiten” the country’s population.
“He was a cruel dictator,” Benjamin said of Trujillo. “But it’s not for me to judge. Because for us, he saved our lives. If you’re drowning and someone throws you a rope, you hold on to it. You don’t start asking his motive. You just hold on.”
In 1947, Benjamin was among the last group of Jewish refugees to arrive in Sosua, one of about 10 families known by the other colonists as the “Shanghai group.” The Sosua settlement was run by an organization called the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) that was funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York.
“DORSA would give you 10 cows, a mule, a horse and a cart,” said Benjamin. “My father by profession was a cabinet-maker. He thought he was going to do that here. But there was no market for that. So he dedicated himself to farming.”
Benjamin said conditions in Sosua were “primitive” and a difficult transition for many settlers who had been city-dwellers in Europe. Still, he spoke fondly of a childhood in which he was relatively insulated from the horrors that befell so many other Jewish children his age.
“We had enough to eat,” he says. “We enjoyed the beach. And I went to a Jewish school.”
La Sinagoga de Sosua in the Dominican Republic served the spiritual needs of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Sosua during the Holocaust. It’s now open only for the high holidays. (Dan Fellner)
The school, originally called Escuela Cristobal Colon, opened in 1940 in a barracks and was attended by Jewish children as well as the children of Dominican farm workers. The school still exists and is now called the Colegio Luis Hess, named after Luis Hess, one of the Jewish settlers. Hess taught at the school for 33 years and lived in Sosua until his death in 2010 at the age of 101.
While the children attended school, men worked on farms and women cooked dinner for their families, who ate communal style. Beds were lined with mosquito netting to prevent malaria. As men greatly outnumbered women — Trujillo did not allow single Jewish women to enter the country — intermarriage was common.
Over time, the agriculture venture failed and DORSA instead decided to promote a beef and dairy cooperative, Productos Sosua, which ultimately proved successful.
After finishing high school, Benjamin moved to Pittsburgh to attend college (he’s an engineer who once built and flew his own airplane), got married and started a family. After 17 years in the United States, he decided in 1976 to return to the Dominican Republic, where he became an executive with Productos Sosua. He worked there until he retired in 2004, when the firm was sold to a Mexican company.
“All my life I talked about Sosua as my home,” he said. “I like it here. Everybody knows me.”
A street mural recognizes Sosua’s Jewish history on the main road connecting Sosua with Puerto Plata on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. (Dan Fellner)
Today, Sosua is vastly changed from the sleepy town in which Benjamin was raised. In 1979, an international airport opened in Puerto Plata, just a 15-minute drive to the west. Sosua morphed into a congested tourist destination known for its golden-sand beaches and water sports. It also became a hub of the Dominican sex tourism industry.
Most of Sosua’s Jewish population immigrated to the United States by the early 1980s. Benjamin estimates that only 30-40 Jews remain in Sosua, most of whom are not religiously observant. As a result, the synagogue hasn’t been able to financially sustain a permanent rabbi for more than 20 years. Services are held only on the high holidays, when a rabbi is flown in from Miami.
Benjamin says a group of seven Jews chips in about $2,500 a month to pay for security and other operating expenses.
“It’s very hard to get the Jews here to pay,” he said. “When we bring in the rabbi, we try to charge something. But we don’t get any people if we charge.”
Next to the synagogue is a small museum called the Museo Judio de Sosua, which offers a window into the town’s Jewish roots. Five years ago, the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo donated $80,000 to the museum to preserve and digitize its archives. However, the museum, which is badly in need of repairs, has been closed for the past year.
The Museo Judio de Sosua, which tells the story of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in the Dominican Republic during the Holocaust. The museum is closed while the community waits for funding to reopen it. (Dan Fellner)
Benjamin has been in discussions with the Dominican government in hopes it will soon finance a major renovation of the museum that would include an exhibition hall big enough to accommodate 100 people for events. Benjamin says he is optimistic the project, which has a price-tag approaching $1 million, will be green-lighted by the government.
“They are very positive about it because it could become a tourist attraction,” he says, noting that Puerto Plata and nearby Amber Cove have become popular port-stops on Caribbean cruises originating in Florida. “If it comes to fruition, it will be in the next year. Because if they don’t do it by then, the government changes. And the next government never continues what the previous government started.”
Otherwise, there are only a few remnants of Jewish life in Sosua for visitors to see. In Parque Mirador overlooking the Atlantic, there is a white cement-block star of David, built to honor the Jewish refugees. About 70 Jews, including Benjamin’s parents, are buried in a Jewish cemetery about a five-minute drive south of the synagogue.
The main street connecting Sosua with Puerto Plata has a street mural depicting the town’s history that features a large star of David right above a scuba-diver. And two of the most prominent streets in Sosua — Dr. Rosen and David Stern — still bear the names of two of the colony’s Jewish founders.
Dr. Rosen Street in downtown Sosua is named after Joseph Rosen, one of the founders of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association. (Dan Fellner)
There had been an exhibition about Sosua’s Jewish colony at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York but it closed several years ago. All the more reason, Benjamin says, that the Sosua museum reopens as soon as possible so that the story of the Jews who found a Caribbean cocoon to ride out the Holocaust isn’t forgotten.
“Look at what’s happening in the world — there is a rise in antisemitism,” he said. “It’s very important that our history is documented. It will also be a place where Dominican schoolchildren can come and learn about Judaism.”
With the museum closed, the only place in the area to see photos of the Jewish settlers on public display is the departure lounge in Puerto Plata’s airport. Next to a Dominican band serenading travelers with meringue music, there is a display of pictures showing the colonists riding horses, tilling the fields, attending school and praying in La Sinagoga.
“When they came here, the Jews found no antisemitism at all in this country,” said Benjamin. “They were as free as anybody. They had a wonderful life.”
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A lost film by Israeli B-movie director Sam Firstenberg gets a new life
(JTA) — Sam Firstenberg, the Israeli-raised director behind cult B-movie staples like “American Ninja” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is getting an unexpected career revival — thanks to one of his most overlooked films.
“Riverbend,” his little-seen 1989 action drama, will screen for one night at Alama Drafthouse theaters in five cities on April 29, offering a fresh look at a film about a group of Black Vietnam veterans who arrive in a Southern town and liberate it from a racist sheriff.
It could also revive interest in the 25 or so films Firstenberg directed between 1981 and 2002, which fans celebrate for their unironic commitment to over-the-top action, niche cultures, and pure entertainment value. In films such as “American Samurai,” “Cyborg Cop,” “Delta Force 3: The Killing Game,” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” Firstenberg has been a prolific purveyor of what some critics praise as “earnest shlock.”
It’s a career rooted in the long afternoons a young Firstenberg spent at Smadar, the movie theater in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighborhood. Firstenberg watched the best that midcentury Hollywood had to offer.
Firstenberg, whose given first name was Shmulik, was born to a Jewish family in March of 1950, in Wałbrzych, Poland. His parents had returned to Poland after fleeing east to the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion.
The family arrived in Jerusalem when Firstenberg was 6 months old. Once in Israel, Firstenberg became immersed in cultures other than his own, which, he says, was key to his versatility behind the camera.
“I grew up in a neighborhood that consists of a lot of immigrants from all over the world,” Firstenberg said in an interview. “So, you know, we came from Poland with a Polish background, but around us, there were Hungarian Jews, Romanian Jews, Jews from Morocco, Jews from Tunisia, from Iraq, from Yemen, from all over the world, Indian Jews.
“So my neighborhood was a melting pot of all kinds of cultures from all over the world. I didn’t understand it. I’m telling you all of this [retrospectively], but I grew up in this, all kinds of different food and cooking and languages, and everybody was talking different languages,” he said. “We grew up in a kind of chaos of listening to 30, 40 different languages and cultures.”
Eventually, this led the future filmmaker to the movies. Smadar, now known as Lev Smadar, began screening films for the public in 1950. Firstenberg would spend afternoons watching double features.
“That’s where we were exposed to cinema. So from a very early age, maybe 7 or 6 years old, I would go, and every week he would change the two movies,” he said.
It was a crash course in genres.
“Those movies were mainly Hollywood movies, mainly Westerns, adventure movies, World War II movies, organized crime, gangster movies. Here and there are some musicals,” he said. The showings ranged from classics like “High Noon” and “Bridge on the River Kwai” to escapist movies like “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.”
“This was the diet of movies that I grew up. And that’s how I was exposed,” he said, adding that Israel didn’t yet have much of a domestic film industry.
By the time he was 18 or 19, Firstenberg realized that he was interested in pursuing a career in cinema.
After finishing his Army service in Israel at age 21 — which included a stint as a projectionist when movies were shown to soldiers — Firstenberg decided to go to Hollywood.
“When I finished the military service, I decided, OK, I want to go and study how to make movies. How do you make cinema?” he said. “Now, I’m not fascinated by European movie-making. I’m not crazy about any of that French, Italian, I don’t know, Swedish movie-making. I like Hollywood. I always liked Hollywood movies. I like bullets. I like James Bond.”
In 1972, he enrolled in film school at the L.A. campus of Columbia College. He still lives in Los Angeles, although he continues to speak with a distinctly Israeli accent. He and his wife both have family back in Israel, and they try to visit annually.
While his connection to Israel remains strong, he also regards the film industry as his people.
“I immediately kind of had this feeling that I arrived at home. I was surrounded by people who all had the same language, we all wanted the same thing: ‘Let’s put a story on the screen,’” he said. He relished getting to know people from all walks of life, from Vietnam veterans to students from Japan to aspiring Black filmmakers from the South.
Eventually, his Israeli connection helped him when he met Menahem Golan, the flamboyant Israeli-born producer who helped pioneer Israel’s film industry in the 1960s and set out to conquer Hollywood in the ’70s. Golan later took over Cannon Films and produced several of Firstenberg’s films, along with Golan’s cousin Yoram Globus.
Golan invited Firstenberg to work on “Lepke,” Cannon’s 1975 film starring Tony Curtis as a Jewish gangster in New York. Firstenberg described his job on the film as a “really nothing, very low job, like bringing and taking and schlepping and nothing serious, whatever, you know, drive the car here, drive the car back.”
He ended up taking the advice of the film’s cinematographer, Andrew Davis — who went on to direct “The Fugitive” in the 1990s — to “get next to the director,” to learn how movie sets really work. So he stayed close to Golan, and “forged a connection” with Golan’s Ameri-Euro Pictures, which specialized in low-budget films. Firstenberg spent five years as assistant director on various films, both in the United States and in Israel.
Quentin Tarantino, at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2021, described Firstenberg as “my favorite” of Cannon Films’ in-house directors, and listed Firstenberg’s “Ninja 3: The Domination” as one of his favorite Cannon pictures.
In 1979, Firstenberg went back to school to earn a graduate degree at Loyola Marymount. While there, taking advantage of his access to equipment, he set to work on his first feature, the 1981 drama “One More Chance,” which also marked the film debut of actress Kirstie Alley.
Firstenberg soon became a prolific director, churning out “Revenge of the Ninja” in 1983 — which got major distribution and was successful — and “Ninja III: The Domination” in 1984, both for Cannon Films.
In late 1984, Firstenberg directed “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a sequel to the successful break-dancing movie “Breakin.’” The sequel — or its title, anyway — has earned a sort of immortality as a joking reference, in shows like “Family Guy” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” to any unnecessary or ridiculously named sequel. The film was released just seven months after the arrival of the first “Breakin,’” a film with which Firstenberg had no involvement.
“I had nothing to do with the title of the movie,” Firstenberg said. “It became a big deal through the years.”
Firstenberg kept up a breakneck pace in the 1980s and ‘90s, sometimes completing two or three movies in one calendar year. In 1985, he directed “American Ninja,” which he calls his most popular movie, and its sequel two years later. He continued directing movies until after the turn of the millennium.
“I was busy with other movies. I was still directing. I was getting directorial jobs,” he said. “And then at some point I stopped directing, and I started to look into the movies that I have done, what happened to them.”
Some of them are easy to find. Much of the director’s work, including “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is available on the free streaming service Tubi. But other movies have proven harder to track down.
“Out of 25 movies that I directed, some of them became very famous,” he added. “But some other movies … stuff happened.”
Firstenberg came to direct “Riverbend” after he was approached by a group of private investors from Texas — a pair of married couples, one white and one Black — who weren’t experienced in the movie business. But they were familiar with his previous work, and were hoping to lure actor Steve James, who had starred in Firstenberg’s “American Ninja,” and ended up starring in “Riverbend.”
“Riverbend,” which had a minor theatrical release in 1989 and was later relegated to VHS, has been restored thanks to the efforts of Philadelphia-based archivist Michael J. Dennis. Dennis, who hosts a YouTube channel and film screenings focused on African-American-oriented film, had discovered the film in his days as a video store clerk in the early 1990s, only to find it had almost completely dropped out of sight.
“Riverbend” is “the best movie you’ll see that you never heard of,” Dennis told cinéSPEAK Journal. “One of the things we talk about on my channel is self-reliance and empowerment, and ‘Riverbend’ is a rare film in that it shows Black people standing up for one another. It shows Black people teaching and training one another to fight for their rights.”
Dennis got in touch with Firstenberg and, during the pandemic, tracked down a 35-millimeter copy of the film in South Africa. He eventually obtained the original negative, which led to a crowdfunding campaign and, ultimately, the film’s full restoration. This has led to a series of one-off screenings around the country, hosted by Firstenberg, Dennis, and actors from the film. A Blu-ray release is also planned.
“I feel very comfortable with different cultures,” Firstenberg said. “This is exactly the way I grew up when I was a kid. I grew up with many, many people. So, for me to understand, I believe so: understanding a different culture is easy. It’s no problem for me.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei
(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.
There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.
There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.
And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.
“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”
The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.
“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.
A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.
Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.
The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.
Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking
Harpo Marx’s wife, Susan Fleming, once remarked that, when you got him talking, you couldn’t shut him up.
The proof was there for those who chanced to see him in the 1930s and ‘40s, screening clips of the films he made with his brothers. If a crowd was good, he’d deliver what was known as “Red’s Speech,” a reference to the red wig he wore on stage.
The speech grew more verbose with each recitation, with input by Harpo’s friend, the critic Alexander Woollcott, a fount of $5 dollar words. It got so long, in fact, that Harpo would take it out in the form of a long script that spilled off the stage down the aisle.
“There’s always been this fallacy that Harpo never spoke on stage,” said Marx historian Robert S. Bader, author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage and Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. When he did, he would often make a joke about the mute persona he adopted in 1914, opening his remarks with “as I was about to say in 1915.”
In 1964, Harpo was hitting the speaking circuit. He spoke at events for the United Jewish Appeal, having grown more connected to his Jewishness after a 1963 trip to Israel. On these occasions, Bader said, Harpo “might have looked like a local councilman, just wearing a business suit,” and would sneak in a line from his bar mitzvah speech: “For 13 long years, I have toiled and labored for your happiness.”
Advised to retire from performing after a number of heart attacks, Harpo reasoned that, so long as it was for charity and he didn’t get paid, it couldn’t count as work.
That rationale led to Harpo’s appearance at benefits for a number of symphony orchestras. On March 20, 1964, he gave his final performance at a concert for the Riverside Symphony Orchestra in California, playing a suite of songs about the moon, an original composition and conducting a particularly manic take on Haydn’s “Toy Symphony.”
This time, Harpo not only spoke, giving a lively recitation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, he did something unprecedented by allowing himself to be recorded with the understanding the public might someday hear it.
On June 5, 2026 a record of the evening will be released as Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert. It was announced on April 1, but it was no April Fools joke. It’s an outstanding artifact, and it was discovered quite by accident.
John Tefteller, the foremost collector of rare, Marx-related records, was looking for a copy of a 1963 concert with Harpo and comedian-musician Allan Sherman, recorded by Sherman’s son Robert. Looking in the tape box for Pasadena, Sherman instead found the Riverside tape. Oddly enough, Robert Sherman had no memory of recording — or even attending — the Riverside concert.
Bill Marx, Harpo’s son and the arranger of much of his music, says the man on the recording, telling the tale of “Peeduh,” the “boid” and the “huntahs,” is the one he grew up with.
“It was very, very low key,” said Bill Marx, now a celebrated pianist and Juilliard-trained composer, recalling his father’s voice. “I think I would have to say that he was about five or six notes lower than Groucho’s. It was easy to hear him speak. I suppose you could call him soft-spoken. He rarely if ever raised his voice in our house with my two brothers and sisters.”
Instead, he would do something like wake his daughter in the middle of the night to play jacks.
Peter and the Wolf, written for young audiences, was a natural fit for Harpo, and it was his idea to do it. The version of the libretto, co-written by Harpo and Groucho, also features a topical joke for that election year of 1964: “Imagine the triumphant procession. Peeduh at the head, after him the huntahs leading the wolf, then Goldwatuh, Rockefelluh and Nixon.”
That Harpo was a patron of the symphony is no great surprise. He practiced the harp three hours a day and Bill Marx remembers his father’s love of French impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel and Fauré. When Bill played records in his bedroom, without fail his father would knock on the door, ask what he was listening to, and commit to learning it — which he did.
“He just had a great learning thirst, and I had the privilege of watching this man appear in everybody’s life by doing things that he was compelled to do,” Bill Marx said.
As the narrator of Peter and the Wolf, Harpo is wonderfully expressive, evoking the storytelling of an old-time New York-born Zayde (dressed in his traditional costume at the concert, he donned a new accessory: reading glasses). He sounds quite a lot like Chico, his closest brother in age.
Restoring the tape took major work from audio restorer Joel Tefteller (John’s son) and audio engineer Nick Bergh. At one point, in his closing speech, Harpo walked away from the mic, making the original tape almost inaudible.
“He wasn’t used to looking for a microphone,” said Bader. “He didn’t have a lot of time in front of microphones. I don’t think anybody ever had to say ‘Harpo get closer to the microphone’ ever.”
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