For those who experienced the war, there were horrors, and too often, desperate actions taken to ensure survival that required secrecy.
Millions of families were torn apart.
An emotionally powerful new documentary film follows two children of war as they try to unravel those secrets kept from them and to understand why they were never told the truth or full story behind them.
Martin Himel is the director and producer of the documentary, Secrets of Survival
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The human story is a journey of discovery involving, Poland, Canada, Germany and the USA
For Malka Rosenbaum of Toronto, who grew up an only child. At age twenty she accidently learned she had a sister born in Poland while her parents were in hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
As an act of survival, the child was given to a Christian family, but was presumed to have died. Thirty five years later, an aunt reveals that the sister might have survived.
From there a long international journey of investigation and understanding begins.
For Juregen Ulloth, as a twenty year old, he discovered that the father he had grown up with wasn’t his father at all. He learned his biological father was a young American soldier. His mother reluctantly admitted it but said she couldn’t remember the man’s name and that is was basically a one-night stand.
When his grandmother dies, Juergen discovers a long secret box of letters and photos showing that in fact his father had desperately loved him and his mother for the first two or three years of his life, but that circumstances and attitudes of the times meant his father’s return to the US, and he and his mother stayed in Germany.
Juergen also embarks on a desperate search for his biological family connection which takes him to records in Germany, then to the US.
Like so many immigrant stories of those who escape desperate situations these stories involved deeply held family secrets, mystery, detective work, and high emotion. The film does however bring a conclusion to both stories
TRAILER: Doc film, Secrets of Survival
The documentary Secrets of Survival will be broadcast nationally in Canada on the CBC Documentary channel on the evening of April 9th.
The documentary will also soon be available in other international venues.
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