Category: The War After

Director: Avi Bohbot, Moshe Nachmias

Producer & writer: Avi Bohbot

Languages: German, English, Hebrew

Distribution: Chaos Films Ltd.

Production Status: Editing, fund raising

How does one cope with a past they cannot overcome?
The War After follows the descendants of Nazi perpetrators and Jewish Holocaust survivors who embark on an extraordinary journey that begins in Berlin.

Carrying an unbearable weight, these descendants come together in a rare workshop that recreates traumatic events from the lives of their parents and grandparents. Led by an Israeli and German psychotherapist, these participants expose their emotional struggles through theatrical role playing. Inside the inner circle of this workshop and on a haunting train ride to Auschwitz, we witness deeply personal transformations that encase a remarkable therapeutic process.

Gaining insight into how the descendants of both victims and aggressors suffer today, The War After reveals the emotional carnage left in the wake of the Holocaust. A man, struggling to reconcile with the fact that his father was a friend of Hitler’s, shares his pain with a woman whose mother survived the camps only by accepting that her body must be resigned to the enemy.

“In the workshop I represent the guilty side.” Hilda (Granddaughter of an SS Officer and Workshop Leader). The descendants of Nazis in the group arrive at the workshop feeling as though there is evil in their blood that must be cleansed. How do you redefine yourself as a compassionate, benevolent human being when you were raised by a generation of hate?

“As a child I was beaten so hard by my Mom and Dad.” Jacob Naor (Israeli son of holocaust survivors and Workshop Leader). The descendents of Holocaust survivors in this workshop are struggling to overcome complex layers of guilt and victimization. Some abused, some molested or abandoned by their parents, these participants bare the burden of knowing that their parents suffered in ways impossible to imagine. Does this diminish the pain they experienced in their childhood?

On a mission to absolve their inherited guilt, the non-Jewish members ask the Jewish members of the group to travel with them to Auschwitz. The request is an impossible one for the descendants of survivors to accommodate, and their refusal sends a painful split through the group.

Determined to confront their conflicted pasts, the descendants of Nazi’s board the train without their Jewish piers. Feeling abandoned, the journey is more difficult than expected. Entering the camp, we follow these Germans as they walk in the footsteps of ghosts. Invoking and recreating haunting scenes, each participant records a video diary of their experience. Sitting in the barracks, and standing in the showers, does confronting an incomprehensible past change your perspective of the present?