OUR SUBJECTS

THE LAST OF A GENERATION

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The film features interviews with dozens of survivors of women’s camps like Gabersdorf, where my mother was imprisoned, now living in Toronto to Tel Aviv, Melbourne, Australia to Malmö, Sweden. I introduce myself as Hela’s daughter, noting a shift in my own identity. Some women are guarded, others bracingly candid, and all shine a light on the shocking traumas my mom erased from her life story. Here are a few of our main subjects:

Lola Grunbaum Israel (Haifa, Israel) revisits the school she and my mom attended and where the Nazis detained them when they were selected for slave labor.

Natalie Mehlman Scharf (Philadelphia) recalls the night the Gestapo abducted her and took her to Gabersdorf, a "good camp,” she says sarcastically.

Sara Bialas Tenenberg (Berlin), a Yiddish singer with a glass eye and a Jewish star pendant engraved with her Gabersdorf prisoner number, takes me to the remains of the camp.

Ida Richtman Steuer (Detroit) speaks plainly about sexual trauma camp and her “camp sisters."

Bella Jakubowitz Tovey (Washington, D.C.) talks of how she and my mom resisted the Nazis in the ghetto and their surprising reunion 10 years after the war.

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