The Boys of Buchenwald

Released in 2002, The Boys of Buchenwald is a documentary that follows child survivors of the Buchenwald camp and explores their reassimilation into society following liberation. I found this piece to be particularly interesting in that it focuses not the horrors of life in the camp, but the troubles faced by victims even after they have been liberated. It is a story of how they coped with what had been done to them and how they all leaned on one another to do so.



In the film, a number of men are interviewed - including Elie Wiesel. They share stories of the fraternity and life-long friendships they formed in the camp and explain how the bonds created there remained once the camp was liberated. As children, many of them were left orphans with nowhere to go. The film focuses on a home that was created for 426 of the displaced Holocaust survivors in France. They went and lived and learned together -- both academics and how to assimilate to a society that was vastly different from the lives they knew while imprisoned. Many of the boys had discipline issues and were rowdy. They did not know how to behave in the real world because they had been so suppressed in the camps.




Even though the experiences had by the characters of The Murderers Are Among Us were very different than the boys interviewed for The Boys of Buchenwald, the two films reminded me of each other. They both focus on the impact that the Holocaust had on people even after the war was over. The men talk about about even the most normal things were strange to them. Elie Wiesel recalls being given cookies and how odd it felt to share - to have something to share. What was interesting about the camp survivors was that they were displaced. They had nowhere to go. This reminded me of the occupied apartments in The Murderers Are Among Us. There is a sense of confusion in the Rubble film that is quite comparable to the confusion felt by the men who were interviewed in the documentary. After the boys were in the home in France, they had to move away from one another. Some went to the US, some went to Australia, etc. They went all over the world. Many of them stayed with host families until they were old enough to be on their own or they were adopted. It was interesting to hear about how they assimilated into these new environments as a result.



At the end of the film, a number of the men meet up on the 55th anniversary of their liberation in France at the house where they lived together. They place that they had stayed is now a private residence, but they still remember all sorts of little details of their stay there as they walk from room to room. They reminisce about the impact that each of them had on one another - how they really held each other together. It was a really fascinating film and gave a level of truth to the fact that life after liberation was not easy and that there was still a great deal of pain and difficulty that the victims had to face.

The Boys of Buchenwald | A Clip from Knowledge Network


Awards
Gold Remi Award at the WorldFest International Film Festival (April 2004)
Bronze World Medal at The New York Festival (January 2004)