The Olympic Doll

Based on Inge Auerbacher's children's book I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust, filmmaker Giora Gerzon's The Olympic Doll tells the story of Auerbacher's childhood incarceration in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Inge survived, as did her beloved doll Marlene—a blond, blue-eyed “Olympic doll” manufactured in Germany to commemorate the Olympics and epitomize Hitler's Aryan ideal (the original Marlene is preserved in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.). Combining archival footage and photographs, Auerbacher's pencil drawings, and scenes of the adult Auerbacher visiting both her childhood home and present-day Terezin, the film also features a voiceover Olympic doll telling part of the story, explaining that many children were killed when the Nazis ruled Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, while survivors suffered from starvation and disease. Much of Auerbacher's experience is recounted in poetry expressing her fear and courage from a child's point of view on topics ranging from her childish pride in wearing the yellow star that marked her as a Jew, to the horrors of life at Terezin. The Holocaust-era footage is not graphic but may be disturbing, although the variety of narrative and visual techniques should engage younger viewers. Recommended. Aud: E, I, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)