Thomas Halaczinsky
Filmmaker - Photographer - Writer
 

Starting in 2002 until 2020 I documented the life of one of the last still living Holocaust survivors, Margot Friedländer who in November 2024 turned 103 years old.  When I met her in 2001 she had just started to write her memoir as part of a memoir writing class at the 92 Street Y in New York City.  She had survived the Nazi atrocities hidden in Berlin but was betrayed in 1943 and deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) - her entire family was murdered in Auschwitz.  By chance she survived the concentration camp and emigrated to the US in 1946. 

After the death of her husband who she had married still in Terezin in 1945 she started a journey to find and reinvent herself.  I was lucky and honored  to be invited to travel part of this journey with her and together we went to Berlin; the City where she was born, that she had left almost 60 years ago, and never visited again.  "Don't call it Heimweh"  my 60 minutes documentary tells this story; it premiered in Germany as the opening film of the Berlin Jewish Film Festival 2005. 

In the following years Margot finished her memoirs “Try to make your life”  published in Germany 2008. Between 2005 and 2008 she had frequently visited the city, started to tour schools to tell her story and in 2008 at the age of 88 she decided to try living in Berlin again.  Her book became a huge success and in 2010 she gave up her New York apartment and shipped everything she owned back to Germany to live in Berlin permanently.  “Late Return” was part 2 of the documentary trilogy that documented this move. 

From 2010 until today Margot has relentlessly worked to educate young people in Germany about the Holocaust. She has received numerous awards and Germany’s highest medal of honour. Her work from 2010 -2020 is subject to my third film about her “Arrived – Margot Friedländer, Berlin”. Over two decades Margot and I became close friends and to keep the film objective I co-directed the film with  Sabine Scharnagl, also the commissioning editor at Bayrischer Rundfunk, Munich. The international German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, co-produced the film and aired it in 4 language in more  than 130  countries around the world.