Nimoy gets sense of theatrical past in `Never Forget'

HOLLYWOOD In the TNT movie "Never Forget," to be shown at 7, 9,11 and 1 tonight on cable systems in the Chicago area, Leonard Nimoyplays Mel Mermelstein, a modest, middle-class family man whomaintains a homemade Holocaust exhibit, stocked with chilling photosand death-camp artifacts, on the edge of his lumberyard in HuntingtonBeach, a Los Angeles suburb.

Mermelstein, 64, lost his family in the European genocide whenhe was a boy. For more than two decades he has shared hisexperiences through a traveling roadshow, handing down painfulstories like dark folk tales to schools and community groups,fulfilling a personal vow to never let people forget about thehorrors of Auschwitz.

"The movie is very different," Nimoy said. "It's not aboutHolocaust footage. It's not about bodies. It's not gas chambers.It's a story that takes place in sunny Southern California. Thereare tentacles of history reaching into our society."

Nimoy, 59, remembers the Holocaust. While Mermelstein wasinterned in a work camp, Nimoy was reading the headlines ofnewspapers he sold on the streets of Boston. Nimoy's parents, bothJewish, were Russian immigrants.

"My parents were involved in gathering up people who came fromEurope and getting them together regularly to put together carepackages of food and clothing to send to Europe," said Nimoy, whoproduced "Never Forget" with Robert Radnitz.

"This is the kind of show business that I thought I was goinginto when I first started out as a teenager," Nimoy said. "Projectsabout contemporary issues and people trying to find their way in theworld. This is what I cut my teeth on in the theater. So I feel, inthat sense, like I'm very much at home on this project. I have beenpopular, even famous, in another world. In another kind of worldentirely. But this is a homecoming for me."

That other world, of course, belongs to the 23rd century. Tomost people, Nimoy is known best as that logical but lovable Vulcan,Spock, who has lived long and prospered for 25 years as first officerof the starship U.S.S. Enterprise in "Star Trek."

Because of his voyages as Spock, some people haven't noticedNimoy's wider artistic endeavors - writing three volumes of poetry,acting in the one-man stage play "Vincent: The Story of a Hero" aboutVincent Van Gogh, and directing such films as "Three Men and a Baby,""The Good Mother" and "Star Trek" III and IV.