Most of the time when the Holocaust is being discussed the emphasis is on the millions of Jews who were part of the genocide, and less about the very lucky survivors. The immediate period following the cessation of the War when people were released from the Concentration Camps only to struggle with their new found liberty in a country physically and mentally devastated was a confusing time for many.
Aida’s Secrets is the story of one such Jewish couple freed and now living in a Displaced Persons Camp in Bergen-Belsen and coming to terms with the exhilaration of freedom. However this new documentary doesn’t start at this point, but some 67 years later in Israel when Izak their son and the Uncle of the filmmakers Alon and Shaul Schwarz, discovers he has a long lost brother.
Izak had been born in the Camp after the war and then was sent by his mother Aida to live with a foster family in Israel when he was three years old. Aida eventually split up with Izak’s father and relocated to Canada, and subsequently mother and son lost touch until his teen years.
Although she occasionally visited Izak in Israel over the years, Aida not only refused to talk about his father but she also neglected to tell him that he wasn’t her only child. It was Izak’s daughter who started looking into the family genealogy who discovered that he had a younger brother who was blind, and living in Canada.
Shepsyl (known as Shep) had moved to Canada with his father after the War, and when the two brothers eventually meet up, the plot gets even more bizarre when Shep reveals that he had no idea that his mother was still alive and living in a Nursing Home just a few hours away.
When the family have a reunion 89 year Aida immediately recognizes Shep as her son, but emphatically refuses to remember anything else. It is soon clear that her selective memory makes her very economical with the truth, and even with the most gentlest of prodding, she refuses to accept or deny what happened in those few years in Germany after the War is over.
Just when we think we have reached the end of the story there are more revelations to follow, and even if Aida will not speak up, DNA testing will prove that the siblings have different fathers. Then if this is another enough there is another secret that gets uncovered and floors everyone.
The Schwarz’s documentary takes great pains not to make any sort of moral judgement of Aida’s behavior in those early years where, with so much uncertainty about the future in her community, sexual freedom was something almost to be cherished. Certainly when her two sons met up with her after being apart for decades, they simply reverted to being her little boys, and just reveled in the reunion without insisting on explanations.
It’s a highly emotional tale that brings joy to everyone involved, and brings some sort of closure very shortly after when Aida dies taking several secrets to the grave, where they will probably now remain.
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