About the film:
These are the accounts of extraordinary individuals, whose lives were torn asunder by the Nazis' reign of terror, and yet emerged, with unfettered wings and infinite grace, to rebuild and flourish in a new world. ---- R.S. Kovacs
For some of the eight survivors featured in this film, their nightmare began far before Kristallnacht--November 10, 1938. For others, the Nazis' brutality became their everyday rapidly-advancing reality only after Poland was invaded on September 1, 1939.
All of these remarkable stories affirm that the human spirit is capable of hope, optimism, and the will to live, even under the most horrific circumstances, and in those split-second instances where betrayal and death are but a hair's breadth away.
In a series of interviews filmed in Baltimore, these survivors, and children of survivors, recount how, in the constant shadow of sickness, starvation, violent death, and the gas chambers, every individual found inner strengths and coping strategies--and, moreover, a will to live that some of them thought they had lost. In some cases, the desire to live was motivated by the goal of carrying on a family name. In others, it was to reunite with a family member who might also have survived, or to defeat Hitler's goal of making the world Judenrein--free of Jews.
All but one of the interviewees survived the Shoah in Europe, in hiding, as slave laborers in factories, or as inmates of concentration camps. Some were subjected to all of these. Only one escaped to America and with a great deal of fortitude and youthful chutzpah, helped form a fledgling rescue organization. He and his colleagues worked tirelessly to bring individuals, small groups, those in institutions of higher Jewish learning, and anyone who called on them, to safety. He, and other equally emboldened young men and women, raised money on street corners and in ingenious ways to fund their bare-bones operation, an operation that cut through much of the red tape and obstacles required by larger rescue organizations.
There is much that all survivors of genocide have in common, and the heinous crimes to which good people have been subjected throughout history are an inescapable blot on our collective memory. It is an imperative to remember because such memories are linked to a universal consciousness that life is finite and to be cherished and not destroyed.
As the number of Holocaust survivors remaining to share their stories is rapidly dwindling, it is critical that those stories be told. They represent a testimony to the worst, and ultimately, some of the best, that humanity can offer. (Text provided by Dr. Kovacs)
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