Tzvi Simchon ’24: Keeping History Alive on Film
(SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY — June 30, 2025) Decades after the Nazis invaded Poland and sent millions of Jews to concentration camps, a class of high school boys from an Orthodox Jewish high school in Brooklyn arrived in Warsaw to revisit their family history.
Their trip is captured in a documentary called “Can These Bones Live Again?” filmed, directed, and produced by Tzvi Simchon ’24, a filmmaker who went along to document the 10-day trek as part of his final project at Empire State University. The film was featured in the Miami Jewish Film Festival earlier this year.
The 50-minute documentary, named for a phrase in the Biblical book of Ezekiel, follows the group as they tour concentration camps, mass gravesites, and memorials that pay homage to the Jewish community that was devastated during the Holocaust. They were joined at times by Dov Landau, a Holocaust survivor. The film also captures the Jewish culture that has since been revived.
Simchon says he wanted to create a film that would bridge the generations, especially as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles and the incidence of anti-Semitism grows. “That whole generation is soon going to die away, which is very scary, especially with the rise of anti Semitism and hate of all kinds,” he says. “We need to preserve that legacy.”
Coming Back to Life
The trip to Poland was organized by Names Not Numbers, a nonprofit dedicated to Holocaust education through oral history and film. Simchon was ready to go on the trip as a student himself in 2020 when COVID struck. When the trip was revived three years later, Simchon was invited along, this time as a professional filmmaker.
Simchon’s camera follows the students as they travel through Warsaw. “We were literally walking on the same grounds where a lot of our ancestors were murdered,” he says.
The students were often at a loss for words, especially at the concentration camps, where they saw showerheads that once spewed gas and piles of shoes and hairbrushes belonging to victims. Many students, Simchon says, were confused.
“It’s mindboggling to see that it’s possible, that something like this could ever happen,” one student says. “They built this massive camp, and it was open for three years without anybody stopping it. I can’t really wrap my mind around it. I can’t really understand it.”
Many of the visitors, including Simchon himself, had family members who died in the Holocaust. Some students had grandparents who came from Poland and discouraged them from going there. “There is an emotional distaste and trauma associated with it,” Simchon says.
To counter the horror, Simchon also included footage of Jewish music and dance, scenes of joy that show Jewish culture is alive and well today. “So, when the title asks, ‘Can These Bones Live Again?’ the answer is yes, they can,” he says. “We are the bones come back to life.”
Filming With Legos
As a child, Simchon loved photography. He learned film editing from his father, a graphic artist who taught him how to make stop motion animation using Legos. His father also showed him the behind-the-scenes secrets to making the movie “E.T.”
“I fell in love with all the work that goes into creating something, and how hours and hours of work can go into a single minute of film,” he says.
In 8th grade, Simchon made a graduation film for his classmates. “It was the worst video I ever made, and they played it at our graduation ceremony,” he recalls. “Afterward, my mom was getting messages from her friends who saw the film and cried. I realized I had the ability to make people feel a certain way through my films. That’s the feeling I always chase.”
For Simchon, who now lives in Teaneck, NJ, the last few years have been a whirlwind. He graduated high school in 2020, took a gap year at a yeshiva in Israel, and launched his film production company in 2022. He got married in 2023 and his son was born this June.
In between, in 2024, he graduated with a bachelor’s in interdisciplinary studies from SUNY Empire where he learned the art of Holocaust filmmaking from Ruth Goldberg, Ph.D., a professor of film. “I owe a lot to SUNY Empire,” he says. “I would not have been able to work and pursue what I wanted to pursue and learn what I wanted to learn.”
While Simchon once dreamed of going to Hollywood, making “Can These Bones Live Again?” has kindled a new passion. “I’m not sure what the future holds, but making this movie created a love of documentary filmmaking for me,” he says. “I hope to one day tell more stories through documentaries.”