Jude

Racist hatred is on the rise everywhere – breaking hearts and tearing lives apart. Such hatred caused my grandfather to lose everything in the Holocaust, torn from his parents and thrust into a new life in an unknown land, unable to communicate. My grandfather has often spoken and written about his experience — but never about his childhood feelings. In asking him to talk from the perspective of his seven-year-old self, I began to sense the potential power of juxtaposing his childhood experience with the historical reality of the Nazis. It is dangerously easy to become numb to human suffering — and to fail to act against hatred. Although at one level the Holocaust feels unimaginable today, the rise of racial hatred is now palpable — and the warnings of history are being ignored. I felt it was critical to explore how film can be a medium through which this tendency to become complacent can be countered. I felt that integrating the poignant personal story from a child’s perspective with the wider historical reality can disarm our defences, allowing the human suffering to touch our hearts and motivate us to stand against the rise of racism and fascism today.