Teenage Witness: The Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Story
In 1941, the Nazis asserted their power by overrunning tiny villages throughout Eastern Europe. In the middle of the horror and chaos stood 15-year-old Fanya Gottesfeld (Heller). Only through the kindness of a Polish peasant did Fanya survive - hidden beneath a chicken coop with her parents and brother for two-and-a-half years. Based on her acclaimed memoir, Love In A World of Sorrow, TEENAGE WITNESS: THE FANYA GOTTESFELD HELLER STORY presents a raw and emotional look at survival and the tenacity of the human spirit. Richard Gere narrates. Fanya's story differs from other Holocaust narratives because of her relationship with a Ukrainian soldier - a Nazi collaborator who helped save her family from certain death. However, this relationship left Fanya with questions she continues to struggle with today. Since the book's publication in 1993, the Holocaust survivor has dedicated her life to spreading a message of hope to audiences young and old. Today, Fanya shares the details of her ordeal with inner-city teens in the hopes of making them understand, and even relate to, the difficult choices she made. The atrocities of the Holocaust occurred more than 60 years ago, but its lessons of courage and tolerance and the dangers of prejudice and baseless hatred remain relevant today. At the age of 83, Fanya contemplates a return to her hometown of Skala, in present-day Ukraine, accompanied by Father Patrick Desbois, the French-Catholic priest responsible for identifying more than 600 previously unknown graves of Jews. The film follows Fanya as she wrestles with the past and focuses on the importance of her work today.
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