While debate continues over what will be built at Ground Zero, work has started this week on the construction of a new Memorial park the size of a city block in the historic Wall St neighborhood. It is dedicated to the 67 British victims who died on Sept 11th. Judith Kampfner reports from the ground breaking ceremony.

REPORTER: Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, is used to wielding a shovel but today he’s flanked by a long haired British Earl and women in large hats. He is reading from a Dylan Thomas poem about nature’s healing power.

REPORTER: The three quarters of an acre site will be torn apart from the paving stones upwards. There will be no standard Parks Department fixtures because every element from benches to lamps will be made by craftsmen incorporating British materials.

BENEPE: It is a rather undistinguished space right now and it will become one of the most spectacular parks in the city when it is done. There is no park anywhere in the city which has this level of talent working on its design.

REPORTER: Stonemason Simon Verity will interlock 240 paving flagstones which will become the base of this British Memorial Garden. He’ll weave two colors of stone have been brought from the wilds of Scotland, to create a poetic representation of the map of the British Isles.

REPORTER: Verity’s workshop is at the side of St John the Divine Cathedral. For ten years, he worked on stone blocks around the main church door. For the British garden he has is hand carving inscriptions of each of the 95 counties of England. The lettering is wild and the background designs convey his ideas about the landscape.Wavy wheatfields, flamboyant curlicues and wild hedgerows.

VERITY: People would say to me.. don’t you get bored carving out this word “ shire” and I say no, each of these is a different shire.”

VERITY: As I’m chiseling, I’m thinking of the letter form I’m carving and the extraordinary country I’m from.

REPORTER: His hundreds of thousands of hammer blows will mark the hardwearing flagstone for years to come.

VERITY: If you put a lot of feeling and energy into it, that will come out.

REPORTER: A winding snake of water will splash over the stones down the natural slope of the site of the British Memorial Garden. It’s a modern variant of a curving Welsh stream called a rill. The landscape architects who were chosen to lay out the garden have just worked on a formal design for Prince Charles’ estate. But here they have let their imagination run wild. Topiary sculptures up to sixteen feet high will have whimsical shapes - like ice cream cones and chess figures – Alice in wonderland style. The garden will be anchored by a sculpture from Britain’s celebrated artist Anish Kapoor. Called “Unity”, it’s a shiny black granite monolith symbolizing Anglo American friendship.

CAMILLA HELLMAN: Anish Kapoor won our competition for a sculpture

REPORTER:Camilla Hellman the driving force behind the garden says the artist has positioned it to reflect light coming in from the East river.

HELLMAN: It will be a hollowed out chamber reflecting light with a flame inside.

REPORTER: The inventiveness of the park can be seen also in fibre optic lights coming out from boxwood hedges and curving benches and plantings of simple as well as formal flowers. The color scheme is cool whites pinks blues and lavenders staying the same throughout the seasons.

HELLMAN: This garden is tradition but with edge, we’re quirky in Britain, we’re eccentric. There’s an eccentricity to this and a personality.

REPORTER: Although this is a memorial garden, there’ll be no explicit reference to the World trade bombing but Simon Verity has carved 67 different finials - decorative fence tops - as a tribute to the 67 Britons who died. One supporter of the garden is Charles Wolf. His wife who was a native of Wales, worked on the 97th floor of Tower One. He said he was thrilled that the park had design integrity. But from his own perspective -

Wolf: It should have had names, but delicately done, not in your face – names and what county they came from but in a situation like this, I leave it to the designers because they have done such a good job. But it’s very personal to me. I have no grave for my wife.

REPORTER: Wolf said he would come down to watch the design take shape and see the garden grow. It’s a gift he said from the Ango American community to New York. The British Memorial Garden is tucked away in area with British roots – aptly called Hanover Square in 1714 after King George 1. Walk down Wall St, take a right on Water St and you’ll come upon it. This oasis in the canyons of financial highrises will officially open next summer.

Most remembered as Mrs. Robinson, film and stage actress Anne Bancroft has died.

She won both a Tony and an Oscar for her role as Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, in The Miracle Worker but she's best known for seducing Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Bancroft, who was 73, was married to actor and producer Mel Brooks for almost 50 years and appeared in three of his movies. It was she who suggested he make a musical of his film the producers.

Last year , Bancroft produced her first play in NY, a one woman show. Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louise Italiano in the Bronx.

Art house movie hits like Monsoon Wedding and Bride and Prejudice,, were intended for Western audiences. They featured some of the high energy music and dance numbers that you’d find in a pure Bollywood film. And they have spurred some New Yorkers—including WNYC’s Judith Kampfner---to explore Hindi cinema—and Bollywood dance styles---further. Here’s her report.

REPORTER: Soundtracks for Bollywood films are lavishly produced. But at an outdoor festival in Union Square, the sound system didn’t do justice to the pulsating energy on the stage. The troupe of young performers called Bollywoodaxion is mostly South Asian, with a few distinctly blond Westerners mixed in . They spin through their routines to hit songs from hindi movies. And the the lead couple have a flirty crowd pleaser.In the audience, Bollywood fans Mark and Lisa Shayen confess they are Jewish converts to the allure of Indian film choreography.

MARK: It seems to make sense when they break into song and dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers would do the same thing. Lisa: its fantasy and escapist, the colors are very vibrant, the movements are very sensous. And it’s very passionate. Mark: They never kiss but I swear you think you saw a whole sex scene.

REPORTER: Mark and Lisa collect Bollywood DVD’s and rent others from a store in Jackson Heights. They’ve been studying the extra dance features on the DVD’s .

LISA: When this group was on, I was telling him, that if they have classes and I think that would be a great way to get exercise. And it would be wonderful.

REPORTER: The troupe Bollywoodaxion has spun off from Pooja Narang’s Bollywood dance classes.

In a beginners class at a studio in the garment district, star pupil Bhavana Nincheerla demonstrates in the front line.

NINCHEERLA: Bollywood incorporates everything – it has salsa in it , it has basic classical Indian, it started out with a lot of that—and then has become ,techno, pop – anything you want it’s probably in there.

REPORTER: The girl next to her says it helps to know the traditional origins

GIRL: Anything like this, when you are doing this beat and keeping the beat and keeping the beat with your hip, that’s a very Indian step, you’ll see that in a lot of folk dances. You’ll see a lot of spins, the really fast spins come from Kathak in North India; south Indian spins tend to be a lot slower, much more footwork than you see in these.

REPORTER: The function of dance in the history of Bollywood was to drive the narrative says Prof Gyan Prakash of Princeton University. The dance sequences also allowed the lead characters to be less inhibited.

PRAKASH: Hindi cinema for a long time has had this prohibition on the display of kissing. Directors have worked around this prohibition by showing highly suggestive scenes through various kinds of clichéd metaphors. The wet sari, like the wet t-shirt routine, has been a long staple of Hindi cinema. The choreographers would often concoct a scene where there’s suddenly a rain, or the heroine gets wet in a fountain—and that was one way of displaying the woman’s body. And this could be the heroine, they could have their cake and eat it too, the heroine would retain her sense of propriety and yet display her body.

REPORTER: Increasingly, he says, there’s been a liberation of sexual energy through the dance numbers. Prakash loves a scene choreographed to a song called “Let’s Disco” in a 2004 hit Kal Ho Nah Ho, which is set entirely in New York.

PRAKASH: You have the heroine who is shown slightly tipsy and she does this disco number and the look on her face is really like a post coital look. And the audience doesn’t see that as odd, even though she is a heroine, because she is a particular type of situation where she’s drunk, where she’s trying to get attention from her man—and then it is allowed.

REPORTER: It’s ironic that at the time when Bombay changed from it’s colonial name in 1995 to the Indian name Mumbai, the content of the films became more Westernized. Prakash says the dances in Bollywood films became more costly and spectacular during the 1990’s. Now, as in a 2002 romantic comedy called Khabihi Kushi Khabi Gham the dance is a celebration of consumer culture. There’s a sequence in an upscale London street.

PRAKASH: The camera first pans on Big Ben and immediately fixes on Dolce and Gabbana, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren …the sequence is also shot like a music video or an advertising film. For example one time, the hero, the first time he appears, he appears in this fancy car. The whole sequence is actually shot like a car ad.

REPORTER: Despite all the attention to consumerism the focus is still on the performers. Special effects aren’t as important as in Hollywood. Actors are given intense dance coaching. Pooja Narang tells her dance students that its not enough to execute the steps, they have to work on the drama.

NARANG: You basically have to over exaggerate. You are acting in a song. Bollywood films are so popular because of the expressions they show when they are dancing.

REPORTER: Pooja Narang recommends dvd’s of the superhits to her students–Kal Ho Na Ho, and Khabhi Kushi Khabhi Gham and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, respectively Tomorrow will never Come, Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sadness and the Brave Heart Takes the Bride. And the students all go a few blocks uptown to the basement of the Virgin Megastore in Times Square where you’re always guaranteed to catch the biggest Bollywood films the day they open in India.

For WNYC, I’m Judith Kampfner.

Links:

The Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi depicted the biblical story of Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes like no other artist. She painted it many times, in fact, almost obsessively. Judith Kampfner found out why.

Spiderman, Superman ... do we really need another comic book action flick? Fans say the Silver Surfer isn’t your average superhero - he’s shinier. No one’s more excited about Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer than Judith Kampfner– she fell for him years ago.

Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux painted his own beach fantasy in 1942 -- “The Village of the Mermaids.” The foreground tells one story, and in the distance there’s a surprise. Judith Kampfner went into the vaults of the Art Institute of Chicago to see Delvaux’s painting with curator Stephanie D’Alessandro.

Home furnishings catalogs have evolved over the past couple of decades into glossy, sumptuous celebrations of domestic life (minus the mess). They're a far cry from the fuzzy line drawings of a Sears catalog at the turn of the last century. But Judith Kampfner says that some of the eye popping splendor in current catalogs begins much longer ago than that: with the 17th century paintings of Dutch Still Life masters.

It is April 19th, 1944. Thousands of mourners silently march from a service at the Warsaw synagogue on Rivington Street to City Hall.  A few carry signs: "Save Those Jews in Poland Who Can Yet Be Saved!" and, "Three Million Polish Jews Have Been Murdered By the Nazis!"  When they arrive at the steps of City Hall, Cantor Moishe Oysher sings El Mole Rachamim, a funeral prayerfor the the 40,000 Jews who died a year earlier in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The Chief Rabbi of Vilna and former Polish Senator, Isaac Rubinstein tells the crowd of mourners and those listening over WNYC, "A year ago, the remnant of what had been the greatest Jewish community in Europe decided to offer armed resistance to the brutal German murderers."

Warsaw, the capitol of Poland, had been the home of nearly half a million Jews, about one third of its residents. When the Germans invaded Poland in September, 1939 and occupied Warsaw, they forced all Jews into a crowded ghetto. Eight-foot-high walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire closed off the inhabitants. Within a few years, starvation and deportations to slave labor and concentration camps reduced the number of Jews in Warsaw by more than ninety percent. After meeting with unexpected resistance from ghetto fighters, on the eve of Passover 1943, the Nazis attacked. Rabbi Rubinstein said, "Against heavy odds, they resolved to fight. Not in defense of their lives, for there was no chance to win the battle.  It was harder to save the dignity of their people and to wake the conscience of humanity."

Jews in the Ghetto fought the Nazis with home-made bombs made with broken light bulbs and nails. In a 1993 interview partisan and survivor Vladka Mead said, "My assignment was to try to obtain, in any possible way, arms for the fighters' organizations… buying dynamite.. smuggling out all kinds of jewelry and selling it to buy the things that were necessary for the primitive factories making Molotov cocktails."[1] Senator Rubenstein put it this way, "For 42 days and nights, all the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto -- men, women and children, old and young, fought almost with naked fists."The Nazis systematically burned or blew up the ghetto block by block, building by building. Within a month and a half the entire ghetto was razed to the ground.

The 1944 gathering at City Hall Park was not only a memorial for the dead but also a call to action for those still alive.  The war was not over and the death camps were still in full operation. Dr. Joseph Thon, head of the General Zionist Organization of Poland and former Editor of the Polish daily Chwila of Lwow, pleaded for support.  "Mr. Mayor, at this moment we stand before you as mourners and with hearts full of pain.  In our desperation we ask your voice to be heard...Mr. Mayor, help us bring our message to places where the fate of our surviving brothers and sisters may be decided.  Help us save them! Chaim Yisrael Chai! The folk of Israel will live forever!"

From his chair on the podium, Mayor La Guardia may have heard these cries for help more acutely than the crowd knew.  Mayor La Guardia's mother was Jewish, and his biographer Thomas Kessner writes that, "although La Guardia did not think of himself as a Jew, his estranged sister was in Europe and he was aware that she had been taken away by the Nazis."[2] The Mayor calls the event "one of the most impressive ceremonies that has ever taken place at this historic spot..."Every man and woman here assembled is mourning the death of some dear one who was brutally and cruelly murdered by the armed forces of the Nazi government.”

Warsaw Ghetto photo from Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler, May 1943. The original German caption reads: "Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs". (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via Wikimedia Commons)

Confirmed reports about the extermination camps had reached the public as early as November 1942. CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow read this copy over the air only a month later."What is happening is this: Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered... Since the middle of July, these deportations from the Warsaw ghetto have been going on.  Those who survived the journey were dumped out at one of three camps, where they were killed. The Jews are being systematically exterminated throughout all Poland... The phrase 'concentration camps' is obsolete, as out of date as ‘economic sanctions’ or ‘non-recognition.’  It is now possible to speak only of extermination camps."[3]

Mayor La Guardia told his audience of survivors and mourners their voices would be heard. "The American people understand the plight of the people of Jewish faith in Europe.  The need to go to their rescue is high on the list of the military actions that are to take place before long."

Although the Mayor was optimistic, little changed. On the home front, U.S. immigration laws were so zealously enforced that even official quotas for Jews were not filled. Many who were turned away were sent to concentration camps. Long after the war ended, crowds continued to attend memorials in the hopes of finding friends and family they had lost.

It was a day of tributes and remembrance in New York City. In addition to City Hall, the Jewish partisans of Warsaw were also celebrated at a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall, and around the city (except war plants) by Jewish workers who stopped what they there doing for a two-minute silent prayer at 11 a.m. followed by eight minutes recalling the actions of those resisting the Nazis.[4]

[5]

[1] Mead, Vladka interview conducted by Andy Lanset, March 15, 1993.

[2] Kessner, Thomas, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York, McGraw-Hill, 1989, pg. 525.

[3] Murrow, Edward R., In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961, Knopf, 1967, pg. 56.

[4] "Jews Here Acclaim Heroes of Warsaw," The New York Times, April 20, 1944, pg. 10.

[5] This feature piece was originally broadcast on WNYC, April 19, 2001.

During World War II, rationing became not only accepted, but a symbol of patriotism for most Americans. Listen to Oscar Brand in this never-broadcast documentary on how the government —and WNYC— helped foster that sentiment.

Using archival footage, the documentary takes us on a short trip through the rationale, promotion, and consequences of rationing, including the dark side it helped create with the appearance of black markets. Within WNYC, Mayor La Guardia offered frequent reminders in his weekly address, there were regular programs dealing with the issue, and various admonitions were often broadcast. All in all, despite the general absence of true privations for the overall U.S. population, there is no question that rationing fostered a sense of solidarity at home and abroad.

In 1942, the Surrealist painter Paul Delvaux painted a seaside fantasy scene called The Village of the Mermaids.  The foreground shows several women sitting soberly along a small village street; in the distance, along the beach, there’s a surprise. Judith Kampfner went into the vaults of the Art Institute of Chicago to see Delvaux’s painting and discuss its origin with curator Stephanie D’Alessandro.

(Originally aired: July 05, 2003)

We celebrate the end of the Cold War 25 years ago this year with Oscar Brand giving us a taste of 1950s civilian defense.

This show, which never aired, was originally produced in the 2000s, using archival material from the 1950s. It recounts several Cold-War era broadcasts aimed at instructing the population in civilian defense. The show highlights a particular broadcast: the simulation of an A-bomb dropped on Crotona Park in the Bronx. During the broadcast (produced by NBC but probably aired on WNYC), an intrepid WNBC reporter interviews a NYC fire Marshall, who —incredibly— describes containing the atomic firewall with his crew. At turns frightening and hopelessly quaint, the various civilian defense broadcasts present as powerful an image of the cold-war mindset as any, including brutal assessments of citizen's responsibilities for their own survival in the US and other countries.