Parents' Guide to One Survivor Remembers

Produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, this moving documentary is one of few accounts of the Holocaust told in person by a survivor. Winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, One Survivor Remembers focuses on the experience of Weissmann Klein, who was first sent to a forced labor camp at the age of 18. During the Holocaust she lost her brother, parents, and numerous friends, yet, in a hopeful moment, met her future husband the day she was liberated. It's scenes like this, her Oscar acceptance speech, acknowledging a female prison guard as proof not all Germans were cruel, and her description of "regular" family dynamics with her brother that add a human, hopeful aspect to the film. But there are also descriptions of her family being forced to live in their basement, with a sign banning "dogs and Jews" from their own garden outside, and accounts of the horrendous conditions of the forced labor camps she was sent to and of the three-month death march she endured prior to her freedom, which killed those close to her and sent her own hair white. There are moments of tearful recollection and determined resistance, as this survivor, who later fought for the human rights of others, tells with great bravery and strength her account of human history at one of its darkest times.