An Untold Story
The chaos in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the search for family, their youth and their trauma left the Child Survivors generally unwilling to speak about their experience. Often parents, older relatives and adults in the community imagined - or hoped - that they didn't remember. As they rebuilt their lives, most child survivors did not tell their story. Only as they have become the last living survivors and have retired, have their unique perspectives began to emerge.
Picking Up the Pieces explores the attempts of the Child Survivors to reclaim ordinary lives through a focus on their values, perspectives and reflections.
The film also reflects the journey of the Director as he researched and tried to understand, indirectly, the experience of his grandmother as she rebuilt her life in Warsaw after the Holocaust. Reflecting this personal journey, Picking Up the Pieces has been constructed as a dialogue amongst the child survivors and with the audience. It uses literary techniques and reframes typical testimony so that the film is constructed as a meditation on the themes of: belief in God, forgiveness, memory (lack of memory), home and Jewish identity.
Click on the photos that follow to learn more about the child survivors and the making of the film.
Picking Up the Pieces explores the attempts of the Child Survivors to reclaim ordinary lives through a focus on their values, perspectives and reflections.
The film also reflects the journey of the Director as he researched and tried to understand, indirectly, the experience of his grandmother as she rebuilt her life in Warsaw after the Holocaust. Reflecting this personal journey, Picking Up the Pieces has been constructed as a dialogue amongst the child survivors and with the audience. It uses literary techniques and reframes typical testimony so that the film is constructed as a meditation on the themes of: belief in God, forgiveness, memory (lack of memory), home and Jewish identity.
Click on the photos that follow to learn more about the child survivors and the making of the film.