Czech Film Center

Synopsis

“They put me in the Toloncház prison. For the third time. An officer asked me whether I had
been there before… Naturally I said no, because I hadn’t yet as Kurt Hübner…” Breaking down
our notions about “Holocaust documentaries,” the fourth film in Lukas Pribyl’s  Forgotten
Transports series focuses on human identity and its changes. It deals with the difficult choices
people escaping the Nazi ghettos and labor and death camps in the Lublin region of Poland had
to make in order to adapt and survive in utter extremity, on the run, in hiding – and does so with
a great deal of ingenuity, much humor and tremendous optimism. This documentary tribute to
the human spirit is completely devoid of commentary, contemporary or make-believe footage,
and employs only impeccably researched geographically and temporally accurate materials and
the fascinating words of the eye-witnesses. Out of 14,000 Czech Jews deported to forgotten
places such as Sawin, Luta, Krychow or Zamosc in the Lublin district of Poland, 50 survived the
war. From playing a deaf-mute fool, armed resistance to a touching tale of forbidden love,
a handful of witnesses share their past for the first time. We have come to associate the
“survival story” with striped uniforms and numbers tattooed on arms. This documentary offers
none of that, only a surprising picture of survival “as we don’t know it.”