Beyond Survival - The Shoah through a child's eyes

This is a 35 minute documentary I produced on the life of one of the 15 child survivors of Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp during WW II.

Some stories we are told are so powerful that they sit with us for all of our lives. The story Fradja Gelcman shared with me in 2012 about her life in captivity during the holocaust is one such story. She very generously allowed me to record her story for this documentary.

Fradja was just two-years-old when the Nazis invaded her neighborhood in Poland. In this film, she recalls her experience in being one of the 15 child survivors of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp when it was liberated in 1945. Fradja was just seven years old when she was finally released. By that time the young child had spent time in many notorious locations including the Lututow Ghetto, the Piotrków Ghetto, as well as Ravensbrück and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Fradja tells the stories of her experiences, including when she was separated from her mother and the conditions of the camps she was held in finally culminating in being reunited with her aunt and uncle when she was eight-years-old.

—Merle E. Singer