I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors

Bernice Eisenstein's sardonic 2006 illustrated memoir—ranked by many alongside Art Spiegelman's classic Maus—is adapted here by animator Ann Marie Fleming. In an approach often darkly humorous (but never transgressive or explicitly violent) and rich with literary and cultural allusion, the narrator of this near-monochromatic short describes growing up with "the unbearable lightness of being a child of Holocaust survivors"—the ever-present reminders that her Canadian-immigrant parents met in Auschwitz and lost most of the rest of their families in the death chambers. Household and community gatherings brought crowds of friends and relatives with concentration-camp tattoo IDs, and her father's addiction to TV westerns makes Bernice re-imagine him as a cowboy hero liberating the extermination compounds. The narrator speaks of "H" (the Holocaust) as conveying a strangely affirming sense of identity, albeit one laden with tragedy and grief and a mission of remembrance. Presented in both English and French versions, DVD extras include interviews with Eisenstein and Fleming. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)