A poignant documentary about the history of a family haunted by World War II. On the basis of archive material, documents left behind by her great-aunt Ro Miller and stories told by her father Eli Asser, Hella de Jonge reconstructs what happened to her family during, before and after the war. How they became aware of the danger, how they fled, how they hid, how they survived and how they died. And how, after the war was over, it continued to weigh on their lives. In Hella’s words, “The doctor advised my mother to have children, to help cope with the incredible loss.” A portrait of her grandmother, who died in the war, still hangs in her father’s living room. The filmmaker’s relationship with him has always been difficult. Fragments of memory never before discussed run together during an emotional journey embarked upon together by father and daughter to places of significance in the history of their family.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
NL
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
A World War II veteran hunts down the Nazi collaborators who killed his wife.
