Tags: survival

Budapest

It is 1962 in New York City and would-be screenwriters, twenty-something Arnie and Robb, attend the funeral of a once famous Austrian Jewish actor hoping to meet celebrities who might help jumpstart their careers. They meet Minna, the dead man’s beautiful 40-year-old sister, a survivor of both the Nazis and the Soviet gulag who invites them into her life. She has a story of remarkable survival—as a Jew in a German camp, liberated by the Soviets who then imprison her in a gulag because she's an Austrian baroness through an early marriage. An ageing actress in the manner of Dietrich wishes to play Minna in a film, a story that could help revive the actress’ career and launch the young men’s careers as screenwriters. Minna is reluctant to capitalize on her Holocaust story—it is the one thing she values and does not wish to be degraded in a film. Her love affair with one of the young men leads to a change of mind—but it has remarkable consequences for all involved. Budapest is a dark comedy, a modern Camille, and a story of love and betrayal, recreating the fragile world of theatre émigrés in New York in the decades following World War II.

I Claudio [אני קלאודיו]

The many ways the Yaacobi family evades capture by the Nazis. They move from Berlin to Italy, and when the daughter, Hildegard, gives birth to a son, in order to protect him they call him Claudio and do not circumcise him. They hide in monasteries, disguise themselves as Swiss-Italian, move from one building to another, until finally the Americans liberate Rome.

On Lambs and Wolves [על שיות וזאבים]

Yashek is a Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by being raised by his gentile nanny and her husband—who also christened him, giving him his name. But his birth name is Avner, and he is brought to Israel, and put in school. Yashek-Avner has a hard time adjusting, and the kids harass him.

The Sparks Fly Upward

The Sparks Fly Upward is a musical drama that follows three German families in Berlin, two Jewish and one Christian, through the Holocaust. Between 1938 and the end of the war in 1945, the families struggle to outlast Hitler. At times the families turn to the Book of Job for diversion, reassurance and enlightenment. Job’s suffering, and the contest between good and evil represented in his story, are reflected in the lives of the characters, who boldly face the question of man’s obligation to man in times of moral and political crisis.