Animated Subject

Baltimore filmmakers use animation to tell the story of one Jewish family’s escape from oppression

by DEBORAH WALIKE, Contributing Editor

(first published in the Baltimore Jewish Times, April 22, 2005)

When Edward and Judy Hilbert finally got to Vienna on Dec. 6, 1956, after fleeing their hometown of Budapest in the midst of what is now known as the Hungarian Uprising, Mr. Hilbert decided to record their journey.

While in Vienna for two months, supported by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Mr. Hilbert, a commercial artist, created a cartoon journal. He rendered their harrowing escape in colorful, animated detail, while waiting for the answer to his lifelong dream – immigrating to the United States.

After reaching America, the cartoon journal became part of a book of personal memorabilia that Mr. Hilbert compiled for his two daughters. He rarely visited the journal until last year when Mr. Hilbert showed the work to animation filmmaker Steven Fischer and professional animator Craig Herron.

And since last summer, the threesome has been painstakingly filming a part live-action animated documentary, utilizing Mr. Hilbert’s cartoon journal. “Freedom Dance” is slated for completion in time for he 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising next year.

“This is the happiest time in my life to meet these two guys,” said Mr. Hilbert, a Pikesville resident who retells the story of his journey to the United States in his thick accent. “I was surprised because I never think about this, making a movie. I’m not making a big deal from it but I love it, every minute of it.”

Mr. Hilbert said he and his young bride of three months had a half-hour to pack up their lives and flee Budapest in 1956. Soviet tanks were pummeling their small apartment. The newlyweds had already witnessed the massacre of Hungarian student and working-class protestors who led the short-lived uprising against Soviet rule in the city streets.

The Hilberts knew a truck driver, an apple farmer with a regular delivery route who agreed to smuggle them to he Austrian border in exchange for their fully furnished apartment. The Hilberts, in their mid-20s, knew enough to get out during that tiny window of opportunity.

As a teenager, Mr. Hilbert survived the Holocaust in hiding and eventually in a ghetto. Mrs. Hilbert, at the age of 14, had survived the concentration camp where her mother died.

But Mr. Hilbert doesn’t like to talk about that period of time. What’s important, he said, is that the two survived, married and didn’t join the oppressive communist party “just to be saved.” So they hid, standing between stacks of apple crates for eight hours – undetected through multiple Soviet checkpoints – and then walked across the border into Austria.

They arrived when the city was lit up and decorated for Christmas. “There was a big difference between dark Budapest and light Vienna,” said Mr. Hilbert. “And the other nice thing was the police were not like Hungary – they gave us cellophane bags of apples and sweets, and they were smiling instead of that terrible face on the police in Budapest.”

Mr. Herron met Mr. Hilbert while the two were teaching classes at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore. Mr. Herron called his friend Mr. Fischer, neither of whom are Jewish, and suggested he meet Mr. Hilbert. When the two got together, Mr. Fischer saw Mr. Hilbert’s cartoon journal.

“I fell in love with that,” said Mr. Fischer, who lives in Crofton and is the creator of the “Steve & Bluey” cartoons. “Here was somebody going through something so traumatic and dramatic, and he still takes the time to catch these adventures in cartoon form.”

“Collectively [between Mr. Fischer, Mr. Hilbert, and Mr. Herron], a light bulb went off. The story was already written, but it had to be retold.”

Mr. Herron – who owns Herron Designs in Baltimore and created the animated short “A Fall From The Clouds” – said he feels animation is “a very powerful medium.” It can beautifully illustrate and communicate serious subject matter, he said, as well as its more commonly accepted ability to entertain and amuse.

The filmmakers are utilizing archival photographs of the Hungarian Uprising, filmed interviews of Mr. Hilbert and “2 1/2 D” animation to tell their tale. Beginning with Mr. Hilbert’s still cartoons, Mr. Fischer and Mr. Herron digitally and physically manipulate the characters to create the animation.

The two are also using the lighting – working from a very dark setting that builds to sunshine and culminates in “a very bright ending” – to accompany their story of oppression to escape to freedom and independence.

“This is a universal story of love, of independence and freedom,” said Mr. Fischer. “It is a story of wanting to be free, of feeling oppression, finding your place in the world and making it your own, of having a dream and doing what it takes – no matter what – to pursue that dream. This is the essence of what we’re trying to find in the story.”

The filmmakers believe the movie will run about 30 minutes, although they toy around with the idea of expanding it into a 50-minute feature film. They have applied for grants and are seeking financing to secure the film’s completion and then promote, distribute and enter it in festivals throughout the United States and Europe.

Mr. Hilbert, who designed the “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” ride in Baltimore’s Enchanted Forest, founded Unique Designs Inc. And spent his life creating animated characters for wax museums, theme parks, restaurants and amusement parks. He “retired” in 1993, though he teaches art courses and painted cityscapes that are exhibited in galleries and public buildings all around the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

Mr. Hilbert laughed and said he chose Baltimore “instead of Chicago or New York” because he “never heard of it before.” Associated Jewish Charities helped him secure his first job at Adler Design and a seamstress job for Mrs. Hilbert, as well as helping them settle in the Mondawmin neighborhood, which Mr. Hilbert described as “a really nice Jewish area at that time.”

Mr. Hilbert said he harbored the dream of coming to the United States from age 14, when an uncle from New Jersey talked about American life. He described his arrival in New York as if it happened yesterday, detailing the look of the moving lights in the city, the happiness he felt, and the “American Hymn” (“The Star Spangled Banner”) that blasted through the ship’s speakers as they docked.

“I was sick for 12 days of the 14-day trip,” said Mr. Hilbert of the journey aboard a former U.S. Navy vessel that brought him here. “But when they said we are at New York, my sickness went away. When my parents were still alive, we went back to Hungary every two or three years, and every time I came back, I almost lie down on the ground. That is my happiest time, every time we’re going to Hungary, when the plane takes off to come back home.”

Now, Mr. Hilbert said the happiest time is working on “Freedom Dance”.

“I don’t mind if one of the Hollywood companies will come and buy it,” he said, joking. “But if they don’t buy it, when we’re finished, I will find something else to do. I don’t want to spend time doing nothing.”