Ella Blumenthal was just 18 when her happy life in Poland turned into a nightmare most people only learn about in history books.
Blumenthal, the subject of the upcoming documentary “I Am Here,” was born in Warsaw and was barely 18 when Hitler’s Nazi war machine rolled into Poland in 1939 and ushered in the start of World War II. She witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, when Polish Jews valiantly fought back against the Germans after tens of thousands of people had been shipped off to concentration camps, and watched in horror as block after block was set aflame by Nazi soldiers.
“The sight of the burning ghetto is forever in my eyes in front of me,” Blumenthal recalls in the documentary.
By the end of the war, Blumenthal had survived three death camps, including the most notorious: Auschwitz-Birkenau. But her entire family, except for a niece, was essentially wiped out. Blumenthal lost 23 relatives, including her parents and siblings, as part of the Holocaust.
Now, with the world looking on as Vladimir Putin’s soldiers kill civilians across Ukraine in what the Russian president falsely claims is meant to “de-Nazify” the democratic country, Blumenthal can’t help but acknowledge the parallels.
“It is hard to hear the word ‘de-Nazification’ used as a justification for further destruction, oppression and loss of life,” Blumenthal, who will celebrate her 101st birthday this summer, told the Daily News via email.
With spikes in bigotry and anti-Semitism being reported nationwide — including in New York City — Blumenthal, as one of the oldest survivors of the Holocaust, feels a responsibility to share with others what she witnessed, suffered and lost.
“I feel I have to share my story, so that people who hear it can do everything in their power to make sure that such atrocities never happen again,” Blumenthal told The News.
In “I Am Here,” directed by Jordy Sank and opening in May, Blumenthal looks back at her life as she prepares to celebrate her 98th birthday among friends and family in South Africa, where she’s lived since 1947. Her harrowing story of survival is told through animated segments interspersed with present-day, live-action scenes of Blumenthal and her family discussing how those years shaped her life.
“The most important thing that kept me going was the belief that G-d has a plan, and that I needed to survive to tell the world what happened to us,” Blumenthal told The News, noting as she did in the film that her faith in both Judaism — which she says “carried” her through the Holocaust — and humanity has never wavered.
Even when confronted in more recent years with those who fail or refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust, Blumenthal is steadfast in her belief that “we should focus on what unites us, rather than what divides us.”
Though she does “make a choice every day to ... respect other people’s views, even when different from my own,” Blumenthal said she has previously tried to reach out to Holocaust deniers to share what she’s been through. Now, she hopes such deniers will see the film.
“To deny the Holocaust is to deny my experience and that of so many others. I would hope the message they come away with after seeing the movie is one of tolerance,” Blumenthal said. “When you take the time to really understand each other, no matter what ethnic or religious background, you will realize that we have far more in common than you think. ... What happened to me can easily happen again if hatred is allowed to flourish.”
