Pizza in Auschwitz

A father in loud good humour, his two weary adult children and lots of luggage - at first glance it could appear just like a normal summer holiday. Until, that is, we discover the destination is concentration and death camps in Poland and Germany, where Israeli Danny Hanoch (74) wants in the presence of loved ones to remember the days that changed his life forever. Their week-long trip is full of emotion. Rather than sorrow, the stubborn father is carried away by anger and bursts of gaiety. His son and daughter find it hard to bear a place soaked in their predecessors' suffering and do not understand their father's need to torment himself with memories. The journey becomes an inter-generational dialogue leading to reflection and the revision of relationships, culminating in a night on wooden bunks at Birkenau. This film by director Moshe Zimerman and two of his students features strong polarities: life and death, love and hate, suffering and liberation. It allows us a view of the souls of a man whose life has been changed forever by WWII and his children, who also bear the legacy of the Holocaust.