Awards
Jerusalem Film Festival
Spirit of Freedom Award 1996New York Jewish Film Festival 1996
Official Selection
Restored by NCJF
This is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Made by and about Jewish displaced persons, the film was shot on location at Landsberg, the largest DP camp in U.S.-occupied Germany. Effectively mixing neorealist and expressionist styles, the film follows a Polish Jew (played by Israel Becker, one of the founders of the first professional Yiddish theater company in postwar Germany) and his family from the thriving Jewish community of prewar Warsaw through the horrors of Auschwitz to the frustrations and instability of refugee life in the DP camps, and culminates in the emergence of a hope for rebirth and renewal in Israel.
"...works brillaintly.... little-known classic... a...marvel"
Ellen Cohn, The Jewish Week, January 1996."...something that no film in the five decades since has been able to recapture...."
Dave Kehr, New York Daily News, January 1996."Among the highlights of the [1996 New York] Jewish Film Festival."
The Jewish Forward, January 1996.
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
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