Six Million and One

Following father's journal

The secret journal of Yosef Fischer, describing his survival in the Nazi camps, was discovered only after his death. His children refused to confront the painful reading—except for David, the film’s director, who viewed the journal as a calling. He is determined to lead his siblings into the forced-labor tunnels in the mountains of Austria, so they can experience together their father's unimaginable willpower to cling to life at all costs.

Fischer also realizes this is an opportunity to dismantle the charged relationships between the siblings and reunite the family.

This is not just another roots journey following the Holocaust: eight kilometers deep in the dark earth, in the heart of the darkness of what was once a mass forced-labor camp, by the light of flashlights, the Fischer siblings search for meaning in both their family and personal history. As the sources of pain are laid bare, the siblings find themselves crying and laughing in bitter-sweet scenes that grant this personal creation a rare intimacy.

That is the beauty of humanity. That we are capable of creating horror, but also capable of creating beauty out of horror... Six Million and One is such a beautiful scar

Eliane Brum, Revista Época, Brazil

An unconventional family, atmosphere, and setting in a very unconventional film. When a documentary film manages to make you laugh and touch your heart—watching it becomes an experience

Yehuda Stav, Yedioth Ahronoth

I walked in a skeptic, I walked out crushed

Yair Raveh, Pnai Plus 

Director David Fischer dares to pit his family's private troubles against the Holocaust, and succeeds

Meir Schnitzer, Maariv

A fascinating mixture of closeness, love, pain, and jokes

Nirit Anderman, Haaretz

...A fascinating documentary Holocaust film... The family drama during the journey unfolds against the backdrop of exposing, presenting, and depicting fascinating and little-known biographical and historical materials

Yishai Kichales, Israel Hayom

Austria Confronts Its Past

The film is a contemporary journey of the filmmaker against a historical backdrop. It is a journey that would not have been possible twenty years ago. It is a search made possible today through the perspective of time, and in this lies the power and uniqueness of this film over many other Holocaust films. The journey, centered on the discovery of his life as a prisoner in the Guzen concentration camp, reveals for the first time the struggle of local residents against the Austrian authorities to preserve the forced-labor sites and to allow visits and ceremonies at the location. Austria, a country that prefers to forget its past and also treat its role as a victim of the war, stands here before the strong will of a handful of residents to remember what their parents and grandparents did, and to warn the younger generation against xenophobia and the denial of freedom. The film consists of close observation of what takes place in the Guzen 1, 2, and 3 camps, and in the peaceful villages living there today.

In the image: The Gestapo interrogation facility in Gunes, Austria, then and now.

Director's Note

Nobody wanted to open Dad’s journal after his death, probably because he was silent his whole life. Who knows what demons would jump out at you from a place that had been closed and mute for so many years. I opened it. Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Guzen, Gunskirchen, murder, beatings, starvation, cannibalism, homosexuality. The demons had a field day. Some places and stories were familiar to me from the Israeli Holocaust lexicon, and the lines in the journal dissolved into them, but there were those I had never heard of in my life, looking as if they were taken from The Lord of the Rings. Forgotten, surreal, imaginary, lacking reality. I went there with a camera to change their fate. I wanted to turn them into reality. Halfway I went alone. The other half I forced upon my brothers, who did not agree to this journey even when they were in the middle of it. Duped, confused, and resisting, I dragged them into caves, forests, and ruined barracks so we could touch together what was locked inside a journal. This is not a film about the Holocaust, because most of the time we laughed.

Why the Film is Called Six Million and One

My dad was liberated from the last camp to be liberated on the last day of the war. He was among the last to leave the camp. He walked on foot into the forest. His strength failed him. He sat down, leaned against a tree, and waited for his death. An American jeep passed by. They picked him up and took him to the hospital. He was saved. He survived. He lived. He came to Israel and established a family. I am his son. But he was very close to becoming a victim. There were six million victims in the Holocaust. If my father had died, he would surely have been number six million and one. Hence the name of the film.

Dad worked at Herist. Earthworks, roads, and water pipes. A simple laborer. When he passed away, I discovered the journal he wrote, and the description of his struggle with the very act of writing. I discovered a father I didn't know. In sparse and concise writing, he told what he went through in the Nazi forced-labor camps. I try to hear Dad’s inner voice as he writes. I try to peek over his shoulder, I look at him from the front and see a tense face. Clenched teeth. Bitten lips. He bites his lips. He pricks himself. A drop of blood. A tiny pain. A sort of unsuccessful attempt to focus on a physical sensation. Just not to sink into madness. Into thoughts. He continues writing, forgets the struggle, and remains only with the memories. It flows now. Flows and associative. How to make sense of everything. Will I make it in time? He asks himself, stops writing. Doubts consume him. When doubts consume you, who can concentrate on writing? Who can be free to write?
— David Fisher

Excerpts from Yosef Fischer’s Journal

This is the fourth time I am trying to write my life story and what I remember more or less from childhood until this period, June 1994, as I am beaming with happiness and expecting a grandchild who will soon be born under a good sign to Ronal and Michal. I hope that this time I will have the mental strength not only to start, but to continue and leave some document behind me, since I did not manage to accumulate property... To tell the truth, my deterioration and lack of sleep began in the last 3-4 years. The moment the boys left home, the restraints were released, and apparently Mali also feels freer and sighs frequently..."

"One morning an order came that all the Jews from New Street should arrive with their bundles at the Great Synagogue. My mother sewed a backpack for each child and filled it with rusks, rice, sugar, and other products... My father and I were left for last. The final moments at home are hard for me to describe. My father took a sharp knife, cut up the feather blankets, and destroyed everything of value that was in the house. I stand frozen. I was in shock. Yes, before that he took the violin, disassembled the strings, broke the bow, destroyed the guitar, the bass, and the drums. He did it with determination and toughness, I saw no tears in his eyes. All this took a few moments, I remained stunned."

"We were engaged in building tunnels under some mountain... Digging with a pickaxe and shovel, hauling construction materials, and pouring concrete. The professionals and managers were citizens from various countries. They generally did not harm people; they would even occasionally bring a piece of bread or even sausage. But the kapos, Ukrainians and Poles, would beat us for no reason at all. Whoever they targeted returned to the camp a broken vessel, weakened, couldn't get into the work lineup, usually got diarrhea, and died... Reason cannot fathom what it is to beat a person for no reason until the person collapses. Cursing and reviling him all the while. I didn't think I would get out of there alive."

"After staying for a few days, they marched us again for about three days. At night we slept under the open sky. It rained... I was terribly cold... The next morning we continued the march. I remember chewing grass like an animal and also gathering snails and sucking them, and gathering snails to have for the evening. I thought that for a few snails someone would let me cook them. But as great as the expectation was, so was the disappointment. They all escaped from my jacket pocket. I was very, very sad."

"In retrospect, I'm not sure that today I would fight so hard for my life. The instinct for life was important, perhaps because we already knew then that we no longer had a family, and I even imagined to myself that we, the Jews, were almost the only ones still left alive... At night I would sneak into one of the structures and fall asleep next to someone who didn't drive me away. You can probably guess why and for what reason he didn't drive me away. That's right."

"At the moment of liberation I was lying in the forest... on a blanket I arranged for myself... Suddenly I see the German soldier coming down from the watchtower and leaving... Suddenly I hear shouts of joy and the noise of tanks, and my townsman Bezalel, who was stronger than me, comes running to me bringing all kinds of tin cans of food and tells me to hold on to them, he is going to get more. But instead of bringing more, he arrives with his face covered in blood. He got a blow to the head from someone. I stand next to him helpless, and then he says to me, pee on my head: 'Piss, piss, Yossele.'"

The Trauma of the Liberators

About what happened in the Gunskirchen forest, in the camp from which he was liberated, my father was unable to write. So I traveled to the USA and found the American liberators. But they too carry a traumatic memory. When I complained that my father never shared with us what he had gone through, they told me it was better that way. That there is no way to tell this story.

During the film, one of the war veterans, Pete Cernabuci, says:

"It is almost impossible to explain and describe what we saw and what happened to us at the gates of Gunskirchen. You cannot explain to people how inhumane human beings can be to other human beings. We saw the worst of all. It must be the absolute worst. I have never seen a horror movie that comes close to what we saw, what we heard, what we smelled."

Festivals and Awards

Best Film Award at the DOK.fest Festival in Munich, Directing Award at the Krakow Film Festival, Honorable Mention at the DOXA Festival Vancouver, Official Selection at the IDFA Festival in the Netherlands. Opening film of the Crossing Europe Festival Linz (Austria). Israeli Minister of Culture Award for Zionist Creation.

Co-production Israel (YES Docu) – Germany (ZDF arte).