When I started watching TO AUSCHWITZ & BACK: THE JOE ENGEL STORY, I was thinking, "I hope this has a lot of film footage and pictures, and isn't all talk." But before it was over, all I wanted to do was listen to Joe Engel talk.
Engel, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, wears a name tag identifying himself as such so that people will ask him about it. He welcomes any opportunity to talk about his experiences during this horrific period in history, because people such as himself who can still relate firsthand stories on the subject are dwindling rapidly.
Fortunately, age has diminished neither Mr. Engel's memories of that time nor his ability to draw us in with vivid descriptions of the most tragic and sordid events imaginable and make us feel as though we're witnessing them ourselves.
His verbal accounts are amazingly comprehensive, detailed, and evocative, as well as straightforwardly articulate, for someone dredging up such a maelstrom of turbulent memories and putting them into words for us and for history itself.
Engel begins the story with his youth in a large family, most of whom he would never see again after the harsh indignities of life in the Warsaw ghetto led to a train journey in a cattle car to one of Hitler's horrendous death camps.
He calmly describes each step in the process, bringing up each memory in his mind with enough detail so that our imaginations can paint heartrending pictures of every dreadful experience.
Most of these stories are accompanied by visuals, whether they be rare photos of young Engel and his family or haunting actual footage from the Warsaw ghetto and from Auschwitz and other death camps (much more of which is available in the DVD's bonus menu) which accentuate Engel's words without overwhelming them.
The combination of words and pictures creates a nightmare world in our minds, one which is too horrible to contemplate as Engel's unfaltering narrative builds with the intensity of a suspenseful thriller.
Often he describes being beyond hope, yet there comes a time when he sees an opportunity to escape and, figuring his odds at 99 to 1, takes it. Miraculously he does manage to get away, eventually joining a resistance movement through which he was able to strike back in a small way against Hitler's Germany.
And then, finally, comes the liberation of the death camps by the Allies and a terrible reckoning for those guilty of such ungodly crimes against humanity. Here, we learn of Mr. Engel's journey to America, how many of his surviving family members he was able to locate, and what has become of him since.
One thing he's done is to make sure his story is told, "over and over and over", as long as he is able to tell it. He reminds me of one of the living books from Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", his very existence a precious historical treasure of which we can and should avail ourselves.
To this end, TO AUSCHWITZ & BACK: THE JOE ENGEL STORY is a most irreplaceable record of this man's passage through a literal Hell and his miraculous survival to tell the tale. The presentation is admirably low-key and subtle, eliciting a sudden surge of emotion at the end which was both unexpected and exceedingly well-earned.
TO AUSCHWITZ & BACK: THE JOE ENGEL STORY
Running Time: 47 mins.
Genre: Documentary
Aspect Ratio: 16 x 9
Audio: Stereo
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About The Holocaust Education Film Foundation
Established in 2018, the Holocaust Education Film Foundation was started to build an international, interactive online community one Holocaust survivor story at a time. Through full-length documentaries, distributed globally through numerous platforms, the online site and educational programs, the 501c3 foundation seeks to ensure that we never forget.
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