Share the World

SHARE THE WORLD

Anita Hollander is an actress who began her professional career 62 years ago and has performed all over the world. She is National Chair of SAG-AFTRA Performers with Disabilities and recently was honored with the Harold Russell Award in Hollywood from the Media Access Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA President, Sean Astin.

Anita Hollander

I strongly resemble my Grandma Celeste, who died 6 years before I was born. She was a Vaudeville dancer, and I came out ready to continue her untimely-ended career, literally jumping out of my crib at one year old. True Story. At three years old, Celeste was brought to America with her family to escape the pogroms of Russian Cossacks in 1904. Had they not fled, my family & I would not exist.

As a performer, composer, director, playwright and “anything I can get paid for” kind of artist, for 28 years I conducted the Village Temple Children’s Choir of New York City. Choir members were ages 5 to 21 and included kids from all backgrounds, races, and disabilities. Our motto: “We Support Each Other.”

We wrote songs together about making a better world (Tikkun Olam, Repair the World, is a mission of Judaism).

In 2015, all of us were very concerned about the immigrant children being torn from their families at our own borders, children separated from their parents and no matter their age, stuck into cages. The choir wanted to write a song about it, and we began to talk about where each of our families were from. At home, these young people discovered they had 20 ancestral countries, and they decided they wished to add, in the middle of our song, a “Welcome” in the language of each of their countries.

The members also created the title SHARE THE WORLD, and the lyric reflect not only my own grandmother’s story but also the story of the Kindertransport the rescue efforts that saved the lives of thousands of children, the vast majority of them Jewish, by transporting them to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940.

Thanks to the wonderful kids of our choir, a song was born, which we had the chance to sing in downtown Manhattan, facing the Statue of Liberty, the vision of Freedom which our ancestors came here seeking. We also sang our song for Ukrainians who recently arrived on these shores at Interfaith Thanksgiving celebrations, and just a few weeks ago, some of the kids and I sang it again for a Fall of Freedom event in New York City where we joined other artists performing their own expressions of what freedom means.