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'After Auschwitz' follows the lives of six women survivors

( Unrated ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

The film’s thesis is that the struggle to survive did not end with the camps. Each of the women profiled recounts, with varying degrees of intensity, the difficulties in creating a 'normal' life in a world where the concept of 'home' can no longer fully resonate.

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James Moll
'After Auschwitz' stars Renee Firestone.
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

Jon Kean’s documentary “After Auschwitz” follows the lives of six women survivors who, in their teens and early 20s after the liberation of Auschwitz, turned their back on the Eastern Europe that had for the most part turned its back on them and made new lives for themselves in America. (A few of the women have died since the film was shot; the others continue to reside in the Los Angeles area.)

The film’s thesis is that the struggle to survive did not end with the camps. Each of the women profiled recounts, with varying degrees of intensity, the difficulties in creating a “normal” life in a world where the concept of “home” can no longer fully resonate. Renee Firestone, one of the women interviewed, speaks of Steven Spielberg as “our hero” for creating the Shoah Foundation to document more than a hundred thousand hours of videotaped Holocaust survivors' testimony. Grade: B (This movie is not rated.)

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