Director’s Statement
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in a coffee shop next to the Empire State Building in New York City when my phone rang. “Go outside,” my husband said, “The World Trade Center Buildings have been hit by an airplane.” I thought he was joking. But I went outside, looked down the barrel of Fifth Avenue and saw that the sky was changing. Smoke rose where the towers had stood. I watched in disbelief as the impossible unfolded. Frozen. Silent. I called a friend in the suburbs and asked her to pick up my three children from school—”just in case.” I even gave her my sister’s phone number in Illinois… “just in case.”
I had grown up believing the Holocaust could never happen again. Ever. But on that terrible sunny day, something shifted. The fear. The hatred. The shock of pure evil. It all felt terrifyingly familiar.
My mother, Ginger, was born into poverty in Berlin. As a little girl, she watched the Gestapo kidnap her mother, who was later murdered at Auschwitz. My mom, known as Bela, became one of the hidden children of the Holocaust. Against every odd, she survived. Bela and her six siblings emigrated from Germany to the United States, were then separated into different foster homes and eventually, my mother was adopted. Her American life was born with loss, silence, education, culture, and love..
In 1986, forty years after leaving Europe, Ginger, my mother, reunited with her biological brother and sisters. I found out after the reunion. I wasn’t there. And I’ve always carried that absence with me.
Ten years later, Alfons, Senta, Ruth, Gertrude, Renee and Judith stood together again—this time on my mother’s front lawn, beneath a towering paper Statue of Liberty. That gathering unlocked something. We opened scrapbooks. Studied photographs. Read a short memoir Uncle Alfons had written. Eventually, he returned to the village of Worin, Germany, where the children had been hidden. With local historians, he submitted an application to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Jerusalem, to honor the farmers who saved them—Arthur and Paula Schmidt. In 2015, the Schmidts were officially named Righteous Among the Nations and in 2018, a ceremony in The Gardens of The Righteous took place to unveil their names on the granite walls. Uncle Alfons passed away just months before the ceremony in 2017.
Seventy-two years after my mother fled Europe, she decided to pick up where her brother Alfons left off and she decided to return to their hiding place in Worin. I went with her. That journey altered the shape of both our lives. Three weeks later, Charlottesville happened. And I knew the story I had inherited now carried urgency. I had never made a film before. But, without question, this story needed to be told.
On October 8, 2023—less than twenty-four hours after the massacre in Israel—UnBroken had its world premiere. The timing was surreal. One week later, it won Best Documentary Feature Premiere. That single moment ignited a forty-city tour, a national theatrical release and finally a Netflix debut on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Within 24 hours, UnBroken soared to #5 in the Top 10 movies in the U.S. on Netflix. To date, over 1.5 million people have streamed our film.
Why does it connect? Because UnBroken is not just a film. It is an invitation.
To feel.
To remember.
To examine who we are and who we choose to be.
I did not create UnBroken to make a political statement or a religious one. I made it to build empathy. To remind us that caring is an action. That standing up for one another is a choice. That the way we treat others is the truest measure of who we are.
UnBroken carries a message that is both urgent and enduring. And after audiences absorb its message, I want more than reflection. I want audiences to feel more deeply, care more fiercely and choose, in their own lives, to be upstanders. For themselves, for their communities and for humanity.