A film which tells the real story of seven Jewish siblings, separated by war and reunited after 40 years, helped by the kindness of strangers along the way, and told by the miraculous offspring of the youngest sister. And now you can watch this inspirational gem on Netflix, starting on Holocaust Remembrance Day — April 23rd.
I’ve often wandered about my grandfather’s courage and how he must have felt when he escaped Nazi Germany at the very moment when Hitler came to power. He never wished to return to his native land, and until the day he died, on New Year’s Eve of 1978, never did. I was too young then to ask him and, while we often have imaginary conversations together — he was a writer too — I’ll never get a chance to find out. Or ask my father, who took whatever wisdom about it to his grave too, always unwilling to share too much.
Fact is, often those stories have been lost to a mixture of miscommunication and reluctance in telling them. Yet filmmaker Beth Lane, in her moving documentary UnBroken — also her feature debut — about the Weber family and their survival during the most horrific time for the Jewish community in history, finally tells the whole story. And shows us that those who helped her aunts, uncle and mom escape from the Nazis didn’t just help preserve seven siblings, they helped create a dynasty of 72 people — “they saved 72 lives,” as a nephew of Lane points out.
Submarine Entertainment and The Weber Family Arts Foundation announced last week that Lane’s award-winning documentary UnBroken is now made available on Netflix beginning April 23rd - which is Holocaust Remembrance Day (or Yom HaShoah). A special screening of the film was presented at the iconic The Paris Theater in New York City, this past Saturday, April 19th. Co-presented by the 92NY Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, Center for Jewish History, Museum of Jewish Heritage and The Barrow Group, the screening was also followed by a Q&A with Lane.
The story of UnBroken is multi-layered. It starts with a Catholic German man, Lane’s grandfather, falling in love at first sight with a Jewish Hungarian woman — one hailing from an Orthodox cantor father. After Alexander Weber converted, he married Lina, the love of his life and the couple moved to Berlin just a few years before the rise of the Third Reich. The first few of the Weber offsprings were born into what they remembered as a tranquil home until, in 1933 their father was arrested and detained for nine months — probably because he was married to a Jew. Later on their mother, who was also helping Romas and other Jews escape, was also arrested.
A lot of these crucial moments in Lane’s spellbinding film, which cannot be a part of any archival footage, are told through animation, something that makes for a powerful watch. Especially after what Michel Hazanavicius said in a recent interview for The Guardian about his animated gem The Most Precious of Cargoes. “The drawings do not lie,” the French filmmaker admitted, “there’s nothing out of frame. The drawings are an evocation of something. Paradoxically, the drawings that are very far from reality might be more realistic.”
In Lane’s film, we listen enthralled by her mom and aunts’ retelling of the Weber family story. We are also helped in our own journey of discovery by the letters of the family’s eldest, brother Alfons, read out loud and containing enough information to make up a book. A book both about the adventures of the Webers but also an in-depth manual of survival during the Holocaust.
This is a story that, unlike many of the stories similar to it from the time, ends well. Although it also begs us to question what a good ending can be, in war, in destruction, in annihilation. Yes, the brother and sisters survived, as did the father who reconverted officially to Christianity and baptized his children too. But at what cost? Upon arrival to America, the Weber children were separated and only reunited in full forty years later.
At one point Lane asks a group of young teenagers hanging out on the ground of where her mom, aunts and uncle grew up in Berlin “Would you hide me?” Would you help someone not in your family to escape their horrible fate? Thus bringing history into the present.
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
At the same time, you may be asking yourself, “Why should I watch yet another film that will remind me of the Holocaust?” Well, because each of these works of the Seventh Art — like Hazanavicius’s animated fairy tale now released in the UK, and even Guillame Ribot’s doc about Lanzmann’s Shoah which recently premiered at the Berlinale — are about so much more than that period in time most of us would like to forget.
They are also reminders of our humanity, and the importance of doubt. As the filmmaker points out so eloquently through her film, the siblings’ survival rested in the hands of a few different persons, like the German farmer Arthur Schmidt who owned a store downstairs from the family home and helped hide the siblings in the most crucial of times. Even his wife Paula, afraid the whole time of being discovered by the Gestapo, who still went along even though reluctantly with his actions.
In fact, UnBroken celebrates all those who created a puzzle of kindness which resulted in the Weber extended dynasty being what it is today. Take one of those pieces of the puzzle away, and the whole house of cards would fall apart — this story of survival turning into a tragedy of death, or deaths. But also, on a whole other level, what each person did to save the sisters and their brother required courage, a quality none of us believe we possess, until the moment arises to put it to use. As an octogenarian German nun points out in the film, and I paraphrase of course, none of us can be sure of what we would do when presented with the opportunity to save seven human beings at the cost of our own safety, and that’s the real value of humanity right there. Because those of us who are able to declare without a doubt that we’d help and save them, are probably the ones who, in the darkest hour, would disappear or turn the other way.
And for that idea alone, UnBroken is a cinematic masterpiece not to be missed. The film begins streaming on Netflix in the US and Canada on Wednesday, April 23rd.
All images courtesy of Submarine Entertainment and The Weber Family Arts Foundation, used with permission.