ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Newly liberated Holocaust survivors, stateless and unwanted, transform a former Nazi stronghold in Bavaria, now a Jewish displaced-persons camp, into a crucible for self-healing and renewal.

SYNOPSIS
AFTER THE FINAL NO delves into the mystery of human resilience and healing after mass trauma. Three Holocaust survivors take us on a ground-level journey from their homes in pre-war Poland and Romania to their crowded shared rooms in the Jewish displaced-persons camp, Foehrenwald, in U.S occupied Germany.

As the world celebrated VE day, millions of displaced persons were scattered across Europe. Most would soon return home, but for the liberated Jews, their long odyssey was just beginning. Having lost everything-family, friends, homes, education—and despite political forces that keep them stateless for years after the war—they gain something unexpected in the community they build together. Moving from despair to hope, they help one another begin to heal.

While they wait for a new homeland, they start schools, theaters, synagogues, newspapers, governance structures, and all other institutions of communal life. And they account for the largest post-war baby boom in any known population. Something akin to a Jewish shtetl, with all its richness, emerges in a place that had been “Judenrein” just short years earlier. For the children born and raised in the DP camps, this is their origin story.

Foehrenwald, the last Jewish DP camp, closes in 1957. German families move into the community, and the 12-year history of the DP camp is largely forgotten. Many decades later, a German historian moves to the area and digs into local archives. She decides to create the country’s first volunteer museum in Foehrenwald’s former bathhouse.

Survivors and their children, now living in Israel and other countries, return to Germany for the opening of the museum, some for the first time since they left Foehrenwald. This return to the past evokes powerful emotions, as elderly survivors pass on their living memories to recorded history.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Phyllis Lee
PRODUCER Phyllis Lee

WEBSITE afterthefinalno.com

ID: 764