In the Hilltowns of Massachusetts, one community is spotlighting how it became part of World War II history.

“The Cummington Story” is a wartime film from 80 years ago that introduced viewers to Cummington, a corner of Hampshire County that’s rarely had over 1,000 people living in it. But, for a short time, European refugees called it home.

The dramatized U.S. Office of War Information film focused on the real efforts to take in about 40 men and women seeking safety after being driven from their homes in Europe.

The town has commemorated the effort and the film over the years, and is doing so again this summer. But this time there’s a special focus on the people who managed to escape Nazism and live work and settle in town, if only for a few years.

“… We wanted to focus on them as people and then also, given what's going on currently politically, we thought it was a timely thing to show,” says Carla Ness, chair of the Cummington Historical Commission.

James Paleologopoulos

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WAMC

A woodcut print, showing Gustav Wolf's rendition of the hostel he and dozens of other refugees lived in for part of World War II in Cummington, Mass.

As far as propaganda films go, it’s pretty well put-together, says Grayson Hawthorn, the commission’s assistant archivist.

Aaron Copland composed the score and the black-and-white film features both real townsfolk and refugees playing their parts. The film was technically intended for an overseas audience, showing New England Americana to different parts of the world.

Narrator Reverend Carl Sangree, a pacifist who abhorred war, found himself supporting and agreeing to an effort to take in individuals and couples seeking refuge in the early 1940s.

A hostel would come together – the same Main Street house still stands today – and soon, new arrivals who worked as lawyers, artisans and in other professions across the Atlantic found themselves in the Pioneer Valley.

“A lot of these refugees had been lawyers or professors in Germany or Austria… and when they came to America, they essentially struggled to find work,” Hawthorn explained. “Many of them worked at the hostel … Gustav Wolf, who is probably the most famous hostel resident… worked as a woodcut artist as he had in Germany and Austria: He worked for the Cummington Press...”

If you see the film at the Old Parsonage building, the deeper Cummington story is on full display, thanks to Hawthorn and company.

As various displays explain, the refugees didn’t simply arrive and depart on a bus as the film shows – they trickled in after fleeing their homes and traversing Europe and other parts of the world - for years in some cases.

“Many of these refugees had fled Germany and Austria during the late 1930s, specifically 1938-39, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany and Kristallnacht,” Hawthorn told WAMC, standing before works of art and articles of clothing that remain in town 80 years later. “Many of them had fled because they saw the writing on the wall and essentially realized there was no guaranteed safety for them anymore.”

Theirs are the stories that are on full-display, like Paul Wieghardt and Nelli Barr, two married German artists who abandoned their home in Norway in 1940 as the Third Reich began bombing the region. Barr herself was Jewish, as were a number of other refugees who would stay in Cummington for parts of the war.

They dodged devastation and were in western Mass. a year later, with Paul later teaching at the then-Cummington School for the Arts while Nelli worked in apple orchards. She also took on sculpting while Paul managed to paint. Images of their work are on display at the town’s new exhibit.

The exhibit also features rare copies, woodcut prints, and more created by Gustav Wolf. A rare copy of the "Book of Job" illustrations he created is also on display.

"Gustav Wolf and [his wife] Lola Wolf are also in the film - there's a scene of Gustav Wolf working at the Cummington Press," Hawthorn recounted. "A lot of the local townspeople were in the film - there's a scene shot at the Cummington Fair. There [are] scenes shot in the West Cummington Church... they actually brought in a 17-and-a half-ton power truck to help power the equipment for the film because they didn't want to overload the power lines here!"

The film was a town event in and of itself, but as Hawthorn recounts, it skips over a lot and takes some liberties. For example, it leaves out the time the FBI was called in because some locals thought a refugee was holding his own "bundis” meeting.

As it turns out, it was actually a man named Hans Kalman, talking to a PTA recounting his experience escaping and the rise of fascism in Germany.

In fact, there was at least some local backlash to the hostel, with a fear of spies being among the concerns. Anti-refugee sentiment was not uncommon at all at the time, and procuring visas was also extremely difficult, Hawthorn recounts.

Ultimately, it’s not that far off from the nation’s current policies on refugees. Late last year, for example, the Trump administration moved to limit refugee admissions to 7,500 people.

It’s all the more reason to highlight the efforts of Sangree and others, says Ness

“… There [are] people like Carl Sangree out there: there are people out there who are making a change, and it is up to us to make that change real,” Ness said. “That is one of the things that we have seen in all these this series of exhibits - individuals standing up for other people's rights as well as their own.”

The new exhibit is open to visitors from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. every Saturday until Aug. 29.