One Survivor Remembers is a 1995 documentary short (39 minutes) directed by Kary Antholis, produced by HBO.
It is the story of Gerda Weissmann
, survivor of The Holocaust, told by Weissmann herself. Gerda Weissmann was a 15-year-old Jewish girl when the Germans entered her hometown of Bielsko, Poland on September 3, 1939. Six years of unimaginable tragedy begin. The Weissmanns are forced to live in the basement of their own home, which is given over to Germans. Her brother Arthur is conscripted for forced labor and is never seen again. Her father is sent to Auschwitz where he dies. Finally Gerda and her mother are separated: Gerda is sent to slave labor while her mother is sent away to be murdered by the Nazis.
Gerda spends three years in slave labor camps, the last being a particularly savage textile mill at a place called Marzdorf. Finally, as Nazi Germany collapses, Gerda is sent with the surviving prisoners on a brutal death march into Czechoslovakia.
Based on Gerda Weissmann Klein's memoir, All But My Life.
Tropes:
- Documentary: Gerda Weissmann remembering her suffering in the Holocaust and the loss of her family.
- How We Got Here: Starts with the excavation of the dead pits at Volary, where the death march ended and where Weissmann was liberated. Then jumps back to Gerda Weissmann telling of the start of the war in 1939.
- The Ken Burns Effect: Used for most of the still pictures in the short, like a pan over a line of Nazi soldiers marching down the streets of a Polish town.
- Narrator: Gerda Weissmann narrates most of her own story, but veteran voiceover guy Peter Thomas adds supplementary narration.
- P.O.V. Cam: Used to complement the narration, like when Weissmann is talking about going into a slave labor camp, and the camera goes into an old industrial facility that either is the slave labor camp or is standing for it.
- Stock Footage: Some, consisting of the excavation of corpses at Volary, Czech Republic
- Talking Heads: Mostly just Gerda Weissmann telling her experiences, but the soldier that liberated hert, Lt. Kurt Klein, is heard from near the end.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: A graphic revealing that Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kurt Klein were still married in 1995 and living in Phoenix, and that they had three children and eight grandchildren.
