Big Sonia

Co-directed by Leah Warshawski and her husband, Todd Soliday, Big Sonia centers on Warshawski’s grandmother, Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski, who has built a good life for herself in Kansas. Every day, she goes to work at the alterations shop that she and her late husband, a fellow survivor, established in a suburban shopping mall, where she is one of the few tenants left. Sonia is friendly, fashionable (with a fondness for leopard prints), and enjoys doting on customers who've been frequenting the shop for decades. When business is slow, she doodles in a distinctive folk-art style, which triggers animated sequences depicting what Sonia terms her "dark spot." During her off-hours, Sonia speaks to middle school students and inmates about her life in Poland under Nazi occupation (she is often introduced by her daughter). In an NPR interview, Sonia recalls that she was 13 years old when the Nazis took away her father and brother (she never saw them again). Sonia and her mother were sent to a series of concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, while her younger sister escaped to live with the partisans. By keeping busy, she explains, she's able to avoid dwelling on the past, although she tells a student group, "I don't carry hate, but I will not forgive." Sonia's sons and daughters talk about the difficulties of growing up with Holocaust survivor parents, but family has helped Sonia to move forward—and keep working even after the mall closes. As Sonia's son, Morrie, puts it, "We were the rebirth of everything they lost." Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)