Refuge: Stories of the Selfhelp Home

Ethan Bensinger's award-winning documentary presents the personal testimonies of six Holocaust survivors living at Chicago's Selfhelp Home, a residence for senior citizens. All of the subjects came of age during the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of World War II, and each was an eyewitness to a distinctive aspect of this tragic era, which saw the disenfranchisement of German Jews via the Nuremberg Laws, the violence of Kristallnacht, the unlikely refuge offered to Jews in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, the concentration camps at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, and the ultimate liberation by the Allied forces. Some of those interviewed were fortunate enough to arrive in America before the war began—one of the men served as a German-language interrogator in the U.S. Army during the 1940s—while others were able to emigrate from Europe only years after the conflict ended. Historic still photography and newsreel footage—including very rare color film of a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in pre-war Poland—illustrates each survivor's story. An invaluable video record of distinctive personal histories delivered by the last generation of survivors of this terrible 20th-century tragedy, this poignant film that celebrates the will to survive is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)