autobiographical

UNBROKEN, a compelling documentary that tells the story of the Weber siblings — six sisters and one brother — who, as a family, survived the holocaust by miraculously evading transport to Auschwitz, where their mother was incarcerated and murdered. The Weber children are the only set of seven Jewish siblings known to have escaped Nazi Germany as a family and to have arrived in the United States together. After the siblings reached America, they were sent by train to Chicago, where they were, for the first time in their lives, separated from each other and placed one by one in different foster homes. They’d been taught by their parents to always stay together. They tried to follow this teaching, but that was difficult. They were children, and obedient.

Beth Lane’s captivating documentary, UnBroken, tells the story of seven siblings who survived Nazi Germany. Following the arrest of their hero mother and previously imprisoned Catholic father, marked for a concentration camp, Lane’s mother and siblings were smuggled to safety in the back of a truck in the dead of night by their farmer neighbor. A journey of unbelievable resiliency, Lane retraces their steps from Berlin to America and into the pages of history.

In this beautifully-made, sometimes harrowing yet inspiring documentary, filmmaker Beth Lane recounts her family’s history, starting before the war and how her German grandfather converted to Judaism to marry her Hungarian-Jewish grandmother and then their move to Berlin. Using on-camera interviews with the now-elderly Weber siblings, family photos and archival footage, together with some wonderful, creative animation, Lane’s Unbroken both recreates the Webers’ past and connects their survivors’ tale to the present