Meet Hans Knoop, the book's author of "The Jewish Council" on which the mini series film is based and produced.

Join Lili Naveh online for an interview with Hans Knoop, one of the makers of our Festival's mini-series, The Jewish Council. Shown in two parts on Sunday, March 7 (3 PM and 7 PM), this session will introduce you to the film and also tell us about the making of it.

Hans Knoop was born as a hidden Jewish kid during the German occupation of Holland. Years later, he became a journalist and in 1963 became the permanent correspondent in Tel Aviv for his newspaper and for Dutch and Belgian national radio and television.

After his return to the Netherlands, Knoop became the paper's war correspondent, and interviewed King Hussein of Jordan, President Sadat of Egypt, the Shah of Iran, President Nixon and Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin.

Years later Knoop discovered that the Multimillionaire Dutch art collector and Nazi collaborator -  Peter Mentan-  whom Knoop pursued and wrote a book about,  and  which was also made into a mini series and screened in 2017 EBJFF Fest, had killed 700 Jews in Galicia (Eastern Poland) during the war and had stolen and looted enormous quantities of art from both Polish nobility and that country's Jews. Knoop managed to visit the villages in East Galicia (then Soviet territory and now Ukrainian territory) and tracked down 15 eyewitnesses of Menten’s murderous acts. Because of Knoop’s unique investigative reporting and his discovery of Menten down in his hiding place in Switzerland, the latter was eventually extradited to Holland. At the end of his trial, Menten was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.