Des­ti­na­tion Unknown

The tremen­dous glob­al changes that came after World War Two some­times con­ceal just how close some of humanity’s worst tragedies are to us. Des­ti­na­tion Unknown is a unique and inti­mate doc­u­men­tary com­pil­ing nar­ra­tives of 12 Holo­caust sur­vivors before, dur­ing and after their mirac­u­lous escape from var­i­ous con­cen­tra­tion camps are unveiled.

Though the film is direct­ed by Claire Fer­gu­son, pro­duc­er Llion Roberts con­duct­ed the inter­views. They remind us that trau­mas of the war are no far­away mem­o­ry, but still scar the present in pro­found ways.

The top­ic is not a new for doc­u­men­tary film: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah left view­ers with an acute aware­ness of trag­ic events. Still, this dark chap­ter of his­to­ry must always be com­mem­o­rat­ed. It can­not afford to sink into obliv­ion. We must not for­get. Each new tes­ti­mo­ny con­tributes to an ever­more intri­cate under­stand­ing of the past: it took Vic­tor Lewis over half a cen­tu­ry to break his silence about per­son­al expe­ri­ences in the Belzec exter­mi­na­tion camp.

The con­tem­po­rary take is note­wor­thy: light is shed on the fate of escapee. Once the vic­tims of one of the worst crimes in Euro­pean his­to­ry, the cam­era cap­tures safe, sound and healthy indi­vid­u­als in the com­fort of their fam­i­ly nests: trau­ma for­ev­er endures, but life car­ries on and love alle­vi­ates the pain. Such hind­sight legit­imis­es the film’s for­ward look­ing, sooth­ing and opti­mistic tone. And this is where its orig­i­nal­i­ty comes from.

Chill­ing Sovi­et and US footage and old, mono­chrome pho­tographs of the camps are occa­sion­al­ly, and care­ful­ly dis­played. Yet, unob­tru­sive music, light tones and the mul­ti­ple colour­ful pho­tographs of the survivor’s joy­ful chil­dren and grand­chil­dren suc­cess­ful­ly makes this film less har­row­ing and dif­fi­cult to watch than the fea­tures released in the imme­di­ate after­math of the Holocaust.

Unex­pect­ed heroes, such as Mietek Pem­per, are also eulo­gised. Lis­ten­ing to how he con­tributed to Oskar Schindler’s list, which saved 1200 Jews, includ­ing Mar­sha Kreuz­man, also inter­viewed, is engross­ing and impor­tant. Rather than once more con­demn­ing the exe­cu­tion­ers, Fer­gu­son pro­vides the vic­tims with a ther­a­peu­tic space.

At one point, the cam­era fol­lows Edward Mos­berg, Pol­ish sur­vivor, back to the Mau­thausen con­cen­tra­tion camp. March­ing up the steps where he once was forced to repeat­ed­ly car­ry rocks to the top, Mos­berg reen­acts this trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence to sur­mount it, and pledges alle­giance to those who the Final Solu­tion muted.