Route to Paradise | |
---|---|
Directed by | Thomas Gardner |
Written by | Thomas Gardner |
Produced by | Trevor Avery Thomas Gardner |
Cinematography | Thomas Gardner Dylan Kirby-Smith |
Music by | Con Daniels |
Production companies | LDHP Another Space |
Release date |
|
Running time | 33 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Languages | English German |
Route to Paradise is a 2020 British short documentary film written, produced and directed by Thomas Gardner. [1] The film follows a team of archaeologists from Staffordshire University as they attempt to uncover the former Calgarth Estate, the site where 300 Jewish children were re-located to after being liberated from Nazi Germany's concentration camps during the Holocaust. [2]
During Christmas 2018, artist and curator Trevor Avery approached filmmaker Thomas Gardner to make a film about the excavation and surveying of the former Calgarth Estate. [3] [4] [ failed verification ] An appeal was later released into the press for stories and photographs pertaining to the survivors from local residents who had been around during their time in the Lake District. [5] The planned dig had been given the go ahead after being funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. [6] [7]
Principal photography began early February 2019 in Oświęcim, Poland at Auschwitz concentration camp. [8] Production was then moved back to the UK, where the crew spent two weeks filming on the grounds at The Lakes School with the archaeologists when the excavation began on 15 July 2019, [9] then travelled to Nottingham to interview Norman Shepherd, a flight engineer with RAF Squadron 196. He was on the flight that brought the Windermere Children to England and is the last surviving member of the crew for that flight. The film was shot over a period of 5 months, featuring interviews with Arek Hersh and Sam Gontarz, two of the 300 children who had been liberated from concentration camps and re-settled in England. The main bulk of the footage came from survivor testimonies intertwined with footage from the excavation/survey of the Calgarth Estate, headed by forensic archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls [10] [11] who is most famous for her forensic examination of the Treblinka extermination camp. [12]
It was released on YouTube in 2020. [13]
Windermere or Lake Windermere is a ribbon lake in Cumbria, England, and part of the Lake District. It is the largest lake in England by length, area, and volume, but considerably smaller than the largest Scottish lochs and Northern Irish loughs.
Arek Hersh, is a survivor of the Holocaust.
Bricha, also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape Europe post-World War II to the British Mandate for Palestine in violation of the White Paper of 1939. It ended when Israel declared independence and annulled the White Paper.
The March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar, thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
Podgórze is a district of Kraków, Poland, situated on the right (southern) bank of the Vistula River, at the foot of Lasota Hill. The district was subdivided in 1990 into six new districts, see present-day districts of Kraków for more details.
George Jiri Brady was a Holocaust survivor of both Theresienstadt (Terezín) and Auschwitz, who became a businessman in Canada and was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2008.
Berga/Elster is a former town in the district of Greiz, in Thuringia, Germany. On 1 January 2024 it became part of the town Berga-Wünschendorf. It is situated on the White Elster river, 14 km southeast of Gera.
Death Mills is a 1945 American-German propaganda film directed by Billy Wilder and produced by the United States Department of War. The film was intended for German audiences to educate them about the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. For the German version, Die Todesmühlen, Hanuš Burger is credited as the writer and director, while Wilder supervised the editing. Wilder is credited with directing the English-language version; however, he later said that he didn't direct anything as "there was nothing to direct".
Sir Benjamin "Ben" Helfgott was a Polish-born British Holocaust survivor, Olympian and champion weightlifter. He was one of two Jewish athletes known to have competed in the Olympics after surviving the Holocaust, along with Alfred Nakache, a French champion swimmer and water polo player. Helfgott spent his adult life promoting Holocaust education, meeting with national leaders in the UK to promote cultural integration and peace.
The Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II is a 1992 documentary film co-produced by Bill Miles and Nina Rosenblum and narrated by the actors Louis Gossett Jr. and Denzel Washington. Using interviews, photographs, and diary readings, it tells the story of the primarily black 761st Tank Battalion and 183rd Combat Engineers during World War II, including their experiences of racism in the United States and their involvement in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Trevor Avery is an artist, curator and producer who has been based in London, the Highlands of Scotland, and is now in the North West of England.
Six Million and One is a 2011 Israeli documentary film, a Fisher Features Ltd. release, written directed and produced by David Fisher. This is the third and final film in the family trilogy created by Fisher after Love Inventory (2000) and Mostar Round-Trip (2011).
Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig was a Polish Holocaust survivor who was interned during World War II at the Płaszów concentration camp where she was forced to work as a maid for SS camp commandant Amon Göth.
Caroline Sturdy Colls is a British archaeologist and academic, specializing in Holocaust studies, identification of human remains, forensic archaeology and crime scene investigation. She is Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation at University of Huddersfield, and serves as director for the Centre of Archaeology there. Previously she was a Professor and Director of the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University. Prof Sturdy Colls also undertakes consultancy for the UK Police forces. Her main area of interest is the methodology of investigation into the Holocaust and genocide murder sites with special consideration given to ethical and religious norms associated with the prohibition of excavating a grave.
Night Will Fall is a 2014 documentary film directed by Andre Singer that chronicles the production of the 1945 British government documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, which showed gruesome scenes from newly liberated Nazi concentration camps. The 1945 documentary, which was based on the work of combat cameramen serving with the armed forces and newsreel footage, was produced by Sidney Bernstein, then a British government official, with participation by Alfred Hitchcock. It languished in British archives for nearly seven decades before being completed in 2014. About 12 minutes of footage in the 75-minute Night Will Fall is from the earlier documentary.
Troutbeck Bridge is a village in the civil parish of Windermere and Bowness, in the Westmorland and Furness district, in the ceremonial county of Cumbria, England. It is situated 1 mile north of Windermere on the A591 road running through the Lake District and was historically in the county of Westmorland. The main secondary school for Windermere and Ambleside, The Lakes School, is located in the village, as is the postal sorting office for the area. Troutbeck Bridge takes its name from where the road crosses the Trout Beck.
Pechora was a concentration camp operated by Romania during World War II in the village of Pechora, now in Ukraine. The concentration camp was established on the gated grounds of what had once been a private estate of the Polish noble Potocki family on the banks of the Southern Bug river, which had been converted into a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients after the Russian revolution.
The Windermere Children is a 2020 British biographical drama television film written by Simon Block and directed by Michael Samuels. Based on the experience of child survivors of the Holocaust, it follows the children and staff of a camp set up on the Calgarth Estate in Troutbeck Bridge, near Lake Windermere, England, where the survivors were helped to rehabilitate, rebuild their lives, and integrate into the British society. The film was produced by Simon Block as 'executive producer' with Nancy Bornat as factual producer and Ben Evans as development producer. The film first aired on BBC Two in January 2020.
Margit Buchhalter Feldman was a Hungarian-American public speaker, educator, activist, and Holocaust survivor. Feldman and her family were placed in a concentration camp in 1944, where her parents were killed immediately. The 15-year-old survived by saying she was older, old enough to be sent to a work camp. She was freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. After moving to the United States, she raised a family and became a public speaker, sharing her experience with students until her death.
Edward Mosberg was a Polish-born American Holocaust survivor, educator, and philanthropist. During the Holocaust, he was held by the Nazis from 14 years of age in Kraków Ghetto, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Auschwitz concentration camp, Mauthausen concentration camp, and a slave labor camp in Linz, Austria, that was liberated by the US Army in 1945. Nearly all of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.