For 13-year-old Shaul Spielmann, born in Vienna and deported straight to the horrors of Auschwitz, this forest became the final stop. Gunskirchen, a Mauthausen sub-camp in Upper Austria, built in the dying months of 1944. Today, almost nothing remains: no barracks to enter, no clear markers to tell you where you are. Only a single foundation, a few scattered signs, and a landscape that has learned to look innocent. In this poetic and fragmentary documentary, Spielmann returns with his family to the site of his survival, while residents and neighbours read survivors’ testimonies alongside their own memories of growing up near a silent, unmarked place. Volunteers, too, work to keep the traces from disappearing entirely.
Directors Hans Seebacher and Tobias Hochstöger do not offer a clinical historical account. Instead, they give the viewer time to ponder, to listen, and to feel what language cannot fully hold. Assembled from voices, pauses, and the stubborn presence of place, the film becomes a kind of memorial stone, its strength rooted in restraint and in its invitation to stand quietly where words fail, offering a haunting experience of remembrance that lingers long after the credits roll.
Text: Nir Ferber
Special Screening:
7.05. 18:30 DOKUMENTATIONSZENTRUM FLUCHT, VERTREIBUNG, VERSÖHNUNG
Stresemannstraße 90 | 10963 Berlin