Life After the Camps

Many films have attempted to deal with the victims of the Shoah, focusing on either the build-up to the deportations or the nightmare of the camps. But few films have examined the lives of the survivors in the immediate aftermath of liberation. How did they piece their lives back together while searching for friends and family?  How were they able to once again become part of a society that had so cruelly betrayed them–or at best remained silent to their fate? Virginie Linhart’s important study of French survivors uses personal records, family albums and–most crucially–reminiscences by the survivors themselves to create a revealing look at the courage, strength and sometimes contradictory emotions of those who had been to hell and back.