Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

‘How Saba Kept Singing,’ Holocaust doc produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, to air on PBS for Yom Hashoah

David Wisnia survived Auschwitz thanks to his operatic singing voice — and a relationship with a lover with whom whom he reunited nearly 75 years later

(JTA) — Hillary and Chelsea Clinton have produced a documentary about a Holocaust survivor that will debut on PBS on Tuesday, timed to Yom Hashoah, or Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“How Saba Kept Singing” tells the story of David Wisnia, a cantor who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for nearly three years, helped in part by his operatic singing voice, which entertained the Nazi guards.

The film also tells of how Wisnia, who grew up singing in his synagogue’s choir in Poland, struck up a relationship with an older woman named Helen “Tzippi” Spitzer during their time at Auschwitz. Her skills as a graphic artist allowed her to move between men’s and women’s quarters, and the two shared intimate moments as fellow inmates watched out for guards.

The two lost track of each other after surviving the experience and did not come in contact again until 2019, when they shared “their account of their unimaginable memories,” a PBS statement reads.

David Wisnia, who served congregations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, died at 94 in 2021, a year after traveling to the former camp to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, despite a series of injuries. His grandson Avi Wisnia, a musician, composed a musical tribute to his “Saba,” or grandfather, which is heard over the film’s closing credits.

The film was produced under the Clintons’ HiddenLight Productions company, which launched in 2020 and specializes in global content that in their words highlights “the best of the human spirit and help our audiences see the world in new ways.”

“David Wisnia’s remarkable story of love in ‘How Saba Kept Singing’ is inspiring and I hope you will find it as uplifting as I do,” said Chelsea Clinton, who is listed as an executive producer, in a statement.

“The pain and horror of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,” added Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state.

The project was co-produced by Retro Report, a nonprofit that makes news documentaries.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.