A Witness to Silence: Don Francisco

Mario Kreutzberger a.k.a Don Francisco
by Vanessa Garcia

"Mine is a story we must move backwards to tell; the story of two émigrés who arrive from Poland to Chile. A mother who arrives, just escaping Kristallnacht; and a father who arrives later a survivor of the camps. Amid all of this a son is born,” says Mario Kreutzberger, sitting in his office at Univision in Doral. Mario Kreutzberger, otherwise known as Don Francisco, the globally
recognizable host of Sábado Gigante, one of the most popular programs in the history of Spanish- Language television.

Lauded many times over, Sábado Gigante has been recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running television program in the Americas. In its 47th year, it is very close to becoming the longest running TV variety program in the world, hosted without interruption by the same host. The show is watched by 100 million Spanish viewers in twenty countries around the world.

What is perhaps less known about Kreutzberger is that, between 2006 and 2008, he created a documentary film called Testigos del Silencio (Witnesses to the Silence)— a film that follows Kreutzberger and his family as they visit concentration camps and journey to Israel in 2006 during the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust. It is also a tribute to his father whose silence after surviving life in a concentration camp, Kreutzberger wanted to break. It was for Kreutzberger’s work on this film that the Simon Wiesenthal Center honored him with the 2009 Legacy Award.

Rabbi May, the Executive Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, explains that the center has a dual mission. “On the one hand to preserve the memory of the Holocaust with a vigorous social agenda and on the other to confront hatred through education,” says May. “Mario’s position makes him a powerful and effective voice. What he did with his film was create an extraordinary outreach in a community [the South American community] where the Holocaust is spoken of less,” says May. It is for this reason that the Legacy Award was initiated, making Mario Kreutzberger the first recipient. The idea, says May, is to continue to search for those that make a difference in preserving the memory of the Holocaust in the same way Kreutzberger did with his film.

As for the documentary itself, it came about as Kreutzberger was having lunch one day in Chile with a very prominent entrepreneur. The entrepreneur had mentioned that he was taking his whole family to visit the concentration camps in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust. He was going because of the “March of the Living,” a program created by the Jewish community to commemorate the anniversary.

“I thought, I can do that, I can take my family and do the same thing,” says Kreutzberger. He had visited Poland and Germany many times for work, but had always avoided the concentration camps out of fear of what he would find or feel. But this time was different. His father had recently passed away, and during an episode of Alzheimer’s he had believed the nurses at the hospital were SS guards. In a sense, his father had broken his silence, ironically, in the hands of a disease that blurs memory. It was Kreutzberger’s opportunity to break the silence as well, in the clear light of day, and in front of a camera, and, therefore, an audience.

And so this time, Kreutzberger confronted what he might find at the concentration camps. He invited 22 members of his family, eight came. Along with his family, he took a camera man and a director. And, little by little the creation of his film came into being. Witnesses to the Silence follows Kreutzberger’s path during the “March of the Living,” a journey straight into the heart of what had always been somewhere in his past and was now resurfacing. “My father never talked about it, I tried to ask but he never spoke of it, as if he wanted to forget, start over,” says Kreutzberger of growing up with a survivor. “We spoke about everything, we were very close, but it was rare that we ever spoke about this.”

There is a moment in the film, perhaps one of the most powerful, where Kreutzberger is in Tel Aviv during a moment of silence to honor the Holocaust’s 60th anniversary. It lasts two minutes. “It’s as if your heart stops, temporarily, all of the city frolic stops and so many things go through your mind and body in that moment. And then when it’s over, and the sound of that joyful city begins again to rush in, then, the blood starts also to rush through your body; it’s impressive,” says Kreutzberger. In a sense, it is also an apt description for what it feels like to watch his film. It is, paradoxically, a moment of silence that breaks the silence. In the narration, at the end of the film, Kreutzberger says, “I am alive, and they are not alive,” as if there is a great responsibility in that desire to live, and go on telling of what went on, what formed him, and what his father, among many others suffered in the hands of hatred.