When 250 cyclists embark on a profound journey, retracing the liberation path of a 10-year-old Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Krakow, Poland, their odyssey provides a stunning parallel for Humankind’s equally perilous journey from dehumanization to empathy – just as our species is now traveling down the most dangerous stretch of all.

In January 1945, after 2 years as a prisoner in a death camp, 10-year old Holocaust survivor Marcel Zielinksi embarked on a perilous 60-mile journey by foot from Auschwitz-Birkenau through an active war zone to Krakow, Poland. A child’s desperate search for any surviving family members. A journey from Darkness to Light.

Decades later, 250 cyclists from 12 different countries traveled to Auschwitz and re-traced 84-year old Marcel’s liberation path as a collective act of empathy called Ride for the Living.

Marcel’s dehumanizing Holocaust experience and the empathy demonstrated during Ride for the Living provide a parallel for Humankind’s equally perilous journey between the two extremes of our nature: Dehumanization to Empathy. Darkness to Light.

Igniting the urgent conversation: When will we stop building monuments for the dead and get busy re-humanizing the living? When will we finally say NEVER AGAIN and truly mean it?

Director Biography - Marc Bennett, Tim Roper

Marc Bennett:

Marc Bennett has spent his adult life creating powerful imagery and stories in print and film. As an artist and photographer, his work has been shown in exhibitions throughout the United States and is a part of many public and private collections, including Yad Vashem, Holocaust Museum LA, the Museum of Tolerance, the California Afro-American Museum, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation.

As a director, he has helmed multiple feature films, documentaries, and music videos. His credits include the feature film Should’ve Been Romeo, the documentaries Life Matters: A Journey of Hope and Survival, and the award-winning Hot Flash Havoc, narrated by Goldie Hawn.

Marc recently directed the animated short film The Tattooed Torah, based on the renowned children’s book about The Holocaust. The film has been an official selection of over 50 film festivals worldwide and has won numerous awards, including Best Animated Short and Best Adaptation.

Marc just completed co-directing the feature documentary For the Living with Tim Roper and producer Lisa Effress to spark an urgent conversation about how our innate human empathy might be the key to disrupting an uncontrollable wave of dehumanization worldwide—the same dehumanization that invariably led to a centuries-long pattern of the worst crime imaginable: Genocide.

Tim Roper:

Tim Roper is an award-winning Writer-Director with a diverse mix of experience in both filmmaking and brand building. After graduating with a Film degree from The University of Texas at Austin, Tim began a 25-year career writing and directing short-form branded content and crafting screenplays.

In 2016, Tim founded F. Yeah & Associates LLC—a live-action “branded content engine” that offers both comedic and dramatic storytelling solutions to an industry struggling to balance

creativity, audacity, and frugality.

As one of the few successful, road-tested hyphenates in the world of branded content, Tim’s writing and directing work has been honored at Cannes, the Museum of Modern Art, The Emmys,

The One Club and the London International Film Festival, to name a few, and has appeared in the Super Bowl and profiled on 60 Minutes.

In 2019, Tim joined Marc Bennett and Lisa Effress to begin writing, co-directing, and narrating the feature documentary For the Living as a cautionary tale for a society grappling with the two extremes of human nature: Dehumanization and Empathy.

Tim asserts that this film—which veers between the intimate and the historical—is not merely about The Holocaust. Or any genocide. “For the Living” is about each and every one of us.

And, ultimately, which “road” we choose to travel.