Destination Unknown

It's difficult to avoid relating Claire Ferguson's deeply moving documentary to the Ministry of Information's German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (1945), Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985) and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993). Much of the archive footage seems chillingly familiar, but the Spielberg Oscar winner is particularly relevant, as two of the 12 Holocaust survivors interviewed over 13 years by producer Llion Roberts were held at the Krakow-Plaszow camp. Helen Sternlicht (aka Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig) was commandant Amon Goeth's maid, while stenographer Mietek Pemper helped Schindler draw up his famous list. Like Edward Mosberg and Stanley Glogover, Pemper had previously declined to testify on film. But they recall their experiences with dignity and determination in the hope that this pernicious crime against humanity should never be forgotten or repeated. Accounts of Victor Lewis jumping from a train and Frank Blaichman escaping to join the partisans are all the more poignant because they knew they were leaving family members to their fate. Indeed, as the duo describe how they summoned the will to keep living, it becomes abundantly clear that the scars have never healed. Thus, it takes a special kind of courage to don the blue-striped uniform once more, as Mosberg does here, and walk silently among the tourists milling around a scene of murderous torment without the first clue about the horrors he has witnessed.