An Auschwitz survivor, Gerda Schrage has lived a remarkable life. But she never told anyone her life story until she was well into her 80s. The reason why she suppressed her past is what makes such a profoundly complex and emotionally powerful film.
Born in Berlin in 1920 to Jewish parents who were rounded up and taken away early on, she was harboured and practically adopted by kind German neighbours during Nazism's rise. Eventually, she was found out, arrested and sent to Auschwitz.
As a Jew, she experienced betrayal, sacrifice, inhumanity and kindness from the least likely sources at the most unexpected times.
Yet she kept it all bottled up even after emigrating to the United States, burying her memories for 60 years, even from her husband and son. It was not until Knut Elstermann, the journalist grandson of an old friend, asked about her past that she grudgingly revealed the full extent of her astonishing experience. The revelations became a bestselling book in Germany, which led to award-winning filmmaker Britta Wauer making this 2008 documentary.
Wauer mines Schrage's later life for an even richer emotional palette. The details of her extraordinary survival - escaping the Nazis, having the "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele personally decide her fate at Auschwitz, and starting a new life in America - are only a part of the picture here.
The heartbreaking revelation in the documentary is the after-effect of Elstermann's book. "Even Holocaust survivors are people with private lives," Elstermann says in the film, hinting at the postscript turmoil.