By Debbie Goodstein
A moving personal document of Holocaust remembrace from a second-generation American perspective.
Filmmaker Debbie Goodstein travelled to Poland to explore the ordeal her mother and sixteen family members experienced when hiding in the attic of a peasant's home for two years during the Second World War. Though long a family secret, this grueling experience had continued to reverberate through the lives of those who survived it and was unconsciously passed on to the their offspring as well. Accompanied by her Aunt Sally Frishberg, who was one of the sixteen, and five of her cousins, Goodstein recorded this haunting, and ultimately liberating, voyage of discovery.
Goodstein and her relatives visit the site of their hiding and talk to people who knew them and remember the war. The interviews and conversations are supplemented by archival footage, which shows what the town, or one very much like it, must have been like during those dark days. Perhaps most revealing, Aunt Sally shares her own often painful memories, providing a thoughtful and moving first-person account of the family's experiences.
With its highly personal style and its exploration of the sometimes unconscious effects of the Holocaust on the next generation, Voices from the Attic is a unique and deeply affecting document that allows its audience to explore an overwhelming subject in an intimate and complexly meaningful way.
Reviews
~ "A deeply moving experience, touching, sensitive, wiseĦ" - Jeffrey Lyons, CBS
~ "In its understatement, honesty and fair-minded acknowledgment of both anti-Semitism and Christian decency, this excellent film is a moving return to a Poland still rippling with painful reminders of World War II. Although it starts out as the filmmaker's personal quest, Voices from the Attic grows into a healing experience for the audience as well." - Annette Insdorf, Author,Indelible Shadows
~ "A personal account that permits its audience to explore and otherwise overwhelming subject in a most intimate manner." - The Sun Sentinel
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