Six Million and One (FILM REVIEW)
Six Million and One
Film Review by Kam Williams
Children Retrace Steps of Late Father in Holocaust Survivor Bipoic
When he was alive, Joseph Fisher never
shared with his children any of his experiences while being interned in concentration
camps during World War II. So, you might imagine their surprise to find a diary
recounting his nightmarish ordeal among his personal effects after he passed
away.
Only one of his offspring, David, could
bring himself to read the memoir, a heartbreaking account of a struggle to
maintain sanity in the face of unspeakable horrors ranging from forced labor to
starvation to torture to rape to cannibalism to murder. The incredibly
revealing reflections (“It’s as if you have no skin to protect you.”)
posthumously erased an emotional boundary that had existed between the son and
his understandably-traumatized, if emotionally-distant parent.
David immediately felt compelled to
travel to Europe to retrace his dad’s footsteps from Auschwitz
to Gusen to Gunskirchen. And he soon succeeded in convincing his very hesitant
siblings to join him on the trek. The upshot of that undertaking is Six Million and One,
as moving a documentary about the Holocaust as one is ever apt to encounter.
At the site of the death camps, we
hear poignant passages from Joseph Fisher’s journal about being ordered to
remove bodies of other prisoners from the extermination block and about having
to eat grass and snails to stay alive. He also talks about how, upon being
liberated, “I felt guilty about surviving. I’ve felt this way all my life.”
By film’s end, expect to weep as
much as all four Fisher kids. A bittersweet tale of survival, as well as a
priceless history lesson for the ages illustrating man’s capacity for inhumanity
to his fellow man.
Excellent
(4 stars)
Unrated
In Hebrew English and German with subtitles
Running time: 93 minutes
Distributor: Nancy
Fishman Film Releasing
To see a trailer for Six
Million and One, visit:
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