I realize I am coming years after the beginning of this discussion but as threads remain on the board I'll respond. I was very surprised to read some of the criticism because I felt and thought very differently about the film.
As background, my parents and grandparents (who were both younger children with siblings born in Europe) were born in the U.S. but had many, many relatives murdered during the Shoah. I am a proud Zionist, pro-Israel, and support the current (Likud) government which causes some to view me a 'right-winger' in terms of Israeli politics (actually I guess I am). I founded an organization to combat antisemitism where I live and believe I am sensitive to it.
I did not find the film diminished the horrors of the Holocaust or that it was repulsive or offensive in any way. As another writer stated, it was not a film about a Jewish family in Europe, it is an autobiographical film about a Jewish family which was fortunate enough and foresightful enough to leave in time.
Saying the film 'should' have had more depictions of the horrors in Europe, or 'should' have addressed or included another topic is to deny the people in the film their humanity. They are not 'representatives of the Jewish people'. They are representatives of themselves. They did many things most other Jews of their time did not do, including leaving everything behind and moving to Kenya and returning after the war.
I'm very well aware that the overwhelming majority of Jews who survived the Shoah left Europe (who wouldn't?) but some Jews who left prior to the war did return - the parents of a friend whose family fled to Peru and lived there for over forty years did some time ago, and I know other friends-of-friends whose families did as well. It wasn't common, but it's not like this never happened. Getting to know the family in the film (I haven't read the book) I can understand why they did so, even if I can't imagine myself doing so under the same circumstances.
If this was fiction I might feel differently, but it's not fiction. This really happened to the author and her family. Why shouldn't their lives be shown the way they were?
For me (and I realize I may have more awareness about this than many) it was clear that the shadow of the Holocaust hung over the lives of the parents, even though it not darken the life of the child subject of the film as much. The topic of letters from home and the grief when their family's murder becomes known certainly let the viewer know that horrible things happened to them.
The family in the film didn't talk about it all the time because really what is there to say? It was the same when my brother and his family were overseas and we were concerned about their safety. We probably could or even should have talked about it more, but saying 'isn't this horrible?' over and over, or discussing every detail of what was happening each day was not going to help them any and would have driven us crazy. When there isn't anything one can do about a situation, sometimes the only way to keep going is to try to let it effect your life to the extent that you can't function, and these people had to function to survive. That's why they weren't always talking about it.
The most important lesson I learned from this film, other films and books about the subject, and the lives of the parents of some of my friends is how incredibly difficult it was even for the 'lucky' people who escaped to be poor refugees in a foreign ("nowwhere") land.
I have read a number of books about those escaped and often people's lives were essentially ruined by being forced to flee for their lives - yes they remained alive, but that's about it. All their hopes, dreams, their families, relationships, language and culture was no more. Personalities, careers, friends, marriages, and other vital parts of what makes up one's lives changed suddenly and were never the same. People almost never got their old lives back.
So it was not 'only' the dead and the survivors who went through the survivors. Everyone did, one way or another.
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