Hanna (left), George (middle), and Thomas (right) in Gemünd, Germany | April, 2010

As our team prepares to embark on the mission to create a full-length documentary on Hanna Zack Miley’s life, we wanted to create a series of blog posts and interviews to introduce you to the people and the stories behind this special project.

To kick off this “Journey To The Documentary” collection, we asked our friend and collaborator, Thomas Cogdell, to tell us about his friendship with Hanna. Thomas will act as the Head of Logistics for our film trip to Germany. In this role, he will help keep our team of eleven (9 adults and 2 children) on track and on schedule. 

If you would like to learn more and donate to this documentary, click or tap the button at the bottom of this page!

For some reason known only in the Divine Mind, God has chosen to have my life intersect several times with key moments in Hanna Miley’s amazing story of reconciliation.  I will always remain deeply grateful for this opportunity.

I really met Hanna by accident in 2008.  Our family of six was on a three-week vacation in Europe.  We dropped into a conference in Germany on the way to Poland, intending to stay a day or two at most.  But we were captivated with what we wandered into – including Hanna Miley sharing her story of German-Jewish reconciliation.

Hanna Miley in Herrnhut | Photo by Thomas Cogdell

In 2009, I started to travel internationally for my work in the oil & gas industry.  The European hub for our corporate airline was Amsterdam.  Several times I was able to schedule my flights so that I had a few days to drive across the border between Germany and The Netherlands to visit George and Hanna.  The first time this happened, they took me on “the tour” of Hanna’s home town, Gemünd.  We stopped at the Kino (movie theater) where Hanna remembered being turned away at age 6 from seeing Disney’s new release, Snow White.  She was denied entrance because she was a Jew.  As she stood in front of the theater, an employee came out and assumed a stance that communicated at best indifference, or even hostility.  The scene framed itself for me as a re-enactment of the rejection decades earlier, and I lifted my camera and captured the moment.  I was glad I did, because since then they have torn down the cinema building.  From that time on, I always tried to have my camera ready to capture meaningful scenes with Hanna in them.

Hanna standing outside of the Kino (movie theater) where she was turned away at age 6 from seeing Disney’s new release, Snow White | Photo by Thomas Cogdell

One of those moments came the next year.  I was again on a business trip and was able to meet the Mileys in Berlin.  Hanna wanted to take me through the famous Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate.  When we emerged from the underground museum into the iconic ground-level sculpture of cement blocks, Hanna found a quiet space and leaned her head against a block to mourn.  I only had my iPhone with me, not my Nikon.  The angle was wrong, so I decided to break the rules momentarily and jump up on top of a neighboring block to capture Hanna as she prayed.  A few years later, on a whim, I submitted the image to National Geographic with a description of Hanna’s story, and it went viral on their Your Shot website, winning several awards and resulting in dozens of comments from viewers who were moved by the work of reconciliation that Hanna had engaged in.

Hanna at the Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany | Photo by Thomas Cogdell

In 2013, I learned that Hanna had (remarkably) been invited to be the matron of honor for Gemünd’s 800th anniversary celebration.  There would be a ceremony on a Sunday, and a week later on Monday the laying of Stolpersteine (engraved brass paving stones) in the street for each house that had had Jewish citizens in pre-Nazi days.  I longed to be there at this culminating event in Hanna’s journey.  But I had burned all my vacation days and could not afford to go.  The Friday before the ceremony, my supervisor at work called me into his office.  “Thomas, I have some bad news.  An emergency job came up, and we need to fly you to Amsterdam on Saturday for some work that begins Monday.”  Wow!  The Lord did it!

I landed on Sunday morning, rented a car (paid for by our client as part of the job), and drove to Gemünd to witness the ceremony.  My work that started the next day stretched two weeks, but the middle Monday “just happened” to be a holiday and so I was able again to drive to Gemünd for the laying of the Stolpersteine.  I was with a colleague who was a skilled photographer, so he took pictures while I focused on recording audio and video from that beautiful day.  Using some simple iMovie editing, I combined these into a memorial video that continues to bring tears to my eyes, even to this day, because it depicts so clearly the redemptive beauty of public reconciliation and reparation:

And now I find myself a part of the project to turn Hanna’s story into a full-length documentary!  I continue to be humbled and incredibly grateful to God that He continues to grant me small parts in Hanna’s very large story.