The End of Remembrance?

How do we get across the monstrosity of the Holocaust today? 
Have we reached the end of remembrance? This is the existential question the film asks.

January 27, 2011: 66 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the so called «Kontaktstelle» (contact pool) for Holocaust survivors in Switzerland, put an end to its existence as a registered association. At this occasion, the members of the «Kontaktstelle» were invited to Berne by official members of the Swiss Federal Administration. Under the auspices of Ruth Dreifuss, a former Federal Councillor, a festivity took place with speeches, music and a culinary buffet.

The film shows moments of this festivity as well as moments of the life of the survivors,  specially when they speak about the horrors they went throug during WWII. They also tell us about what and how was their life after the war and they let us take part of the their meetings. They regularily met during 16 years and still meet until today, although less officially. The group is small, many died and only few contemporary witnesses can still come togehter.

Another part of the film tells about a collection of booklets, written by former victims about their sufferings caused by the Nazis. Title: «Living with my past». 
The world known painter Gerhard Richter made the  edition of the booklets possible (Suhrkamp) and even created a cover for each booklet. These covers are parts of his paintings «Birkenau», the background of which are photographies made secretly in concentration camps.

Director Statement

I am a descendant of Holocaust survivors. My film reflects the experience of a child born after the Holocaust and how he must learn to deal personally with both the horror of the Holocaust and the destinies of the survivors.

In the course of my life, the history of my family was revealed and our link to the holocaust made clear. My father survived Mauthausen,and weighed only 35 kilos when he was liberated. He came from a religious family, but for him, God died in Mauthausen. My mother survived the war in Budapest. My parents believed that Judaism would not be an issue for me; and subsequently, I did not discover the significance of Judaism in my life until I was an adult.

Now, as I hear the stories of the Holocaust survivors who have gathered at the contact point, it affects me personally, because of my own family history.

In the film,I am concerned not only with the history of an important, unnoticed association; I am concerned that each person is personally confronted with the fear of the past. Forgetting and hiding, seems too often to be the solution for people. Should we not at least make a decent attempt at a "visualization" as the authors of the booklets do, and as does a Gerhard Richter with his Birkenau pictures?

Beginning with the dissolution of the contact point for Holocaust survivors, I would like to present a thought-provoking work on how the inconceivable events of the Holocaust can be overcome today.
Peter Scheiner