Survivor siblings remain ‘Unbroken’
New documentary follows all seven who hid outside Berlin, then thrived here
“Unbroken” is about a miracle. It’s the story of seven Jewish children, siblings, who managed to survive the war together in Nazi Germany.
It is a joyous, life-affirming documentary, almost Shakespearean in its complexity, with Nazi evil counterbalanced by a righteous couple who risked their lives to help. Eventually the youngsters emigrated to the United States, where they built lives for themselves.
But there’s also a discordant note. Once she was adopted, Bela, the youngest of the seven Weber children, was for misguided reasons purposely kept from her siblings. Fortunately, the family eventually reunited 40 years after they landed, and as the Bard himself noted, all’s well that ends well.
In fact, Bela’s daughter, Beth Lane, picked up the baton and brought the family’s story to the screen. Using archival footage and photos, home movies, and her own interviews, her narrative is filled with emotions that run the gamut from heartbreak to joy.
Alexander Weber fell in love with Lina Banda the first time he saw her, when she was carrying buckets of water home in her Hungarian village. But he was Catholic and Lina’s family were Orthodox Jews. Her father, Yakov, a cantor, insisted that Alexander convert. When he did, Yakov gave the couple his blessing.
Alexander and Lina married and returned to Alexander’s home in Berlin, where they lived peacefully. Between 1927 and 1939, they had seven children, first a boy and then six girls.
Life changed when the Nazis came to power and imposed restrictions on Jewish life. Lina eventually was arrested and sent to a camp, where she died. Alexander was in and out of prison, saved from the camps by his birth religion. But the seven children were in constant peril.
Fortunately, a neighbor couple, Arthur and Paula Schmidt, rescued them. The Schmidts ran a produce store in Berlin, which was supplied largely by what they grew on their farm in Worin, a small town 50 kilometers outside the city. That’s where they brought the children, at great personal risk, and provided food and shelter for them for the next two years.
After the war and time in a DP camp, the Weber siblings arrived in the United States, but they were placed in different homes. Their father, who also survived, was supposed to follow 10 days later, but in fact it took 10 years before he got approval to enter the country. Six siblings managed to stay in touch.
But Bela was kept apart.
“It’s layered and complicated,” Ms. Lane told me. “You have a 6-year-old child who’s just left a war-torn country. They tried for a while to allow her to maintain contact with her birth family, but she wasn’t acclimating well to her new one. She would act out. She would have nightmares.
“It just wasn’t going well, and so her parents followed the advice of the social workers at the Jewish Children’s Bureau of Chicago, who recommended severing ties and letting Bela really lead a whole new life entirely. I don’t know that you would do that today. I think we have more developed social services that could handle the nuances of something like that. But that’s what the decision was back then.”
It wasn’t until a 1986 party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the family’s arrival in the States that Bela — renamed Virginia by her adoptive parents and later nicknamed Ginger — reunited with her brother and sisters. I asked Ms. Lane if her mom had any regrets about waiting so long.
“I believe that is something she thinks about,” she answered. “She has a great regret that she didn’t connect with her father before he died, her birth father.
“My grandparents were exceptional people, and she led an extraordinary life. She had private schooling and dance classes and summer camps and education. My grandfather, Joshua Speigel, was the president of the Neurological Society of America. My grandmother was a singer and a sculpture and a painter. So she was given a really extraordinary life, especially considering where she came from.
“But she is also very grateful to have had those years since 1986 with her biological siblings. I don’t think she lives in the past. She lives for the present.”
Ms. Lane “first learned that my mom was adopted when I was 6 years old, which is the same age that she was when she was adopted. I didn’t learn at the time that she was a Holocaust survivor, but I learned that she had six siblings I was told I would never meet.
“I think when you’re 6 years old and someone tells you no, you kind of hang up for it, even more than if they had told you yes. So it was something always in the back of my mind, wondering who are these six other people who perhaps look like my mom. Maybe I look like them? Who are they and where are they? What are they doing with their lives?
“I was always very curious about that.”
Obviously, the idea of a film didn’t occur to her until years later. “I never felt it was my story to tell,” Ms. Lane said. The seeds of the project were likely spawned on a Lane family trip to Israel in 2007 that included a stop at Yad Vashem. “We looked in a book that contains the names of the murdered. But my grandmother Lina’s name wasn’t there.”
So the family began the job of getting her included in the book, “and in the process we learned about the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.” When they returned, Bela consulted her brother, Alfons, who took on the responsibility of researching and moving forward an application to accept the Schmidts.
“The vetting process Yad Vashem has is extremely rigorous,” Ms. Lane explained. “For example, if you were somebody who hid Jews, but took money for it, your name is not going to go on the granite walls at Yad Vashem. And the list goes on for what the boundaries and rules are regarding the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.”
The Schmidts eventually were approved.
The Weber family also wanted to add the name of Rudolf Fehrman, Worin’s mayor at the time, who knew what the Schmidts were doing and protected them. “My uncle made an application on his behalf as well. Yad Vashem declined the application. The reason they declined, they said, is because he was a Nazi. Well, he had to be a Nazi to hold public office. So I think in some ways ‘Unbroken’ is my opportunity to also thank Rudy Fehrman, since he’s not on the granite wall.”
If that trip planted the seeds of the film, a 2017 journey is where those seeds sprouted. Beth Lane, her parents, and her sister went back to Germany, hosted by the Worin town historian, who had a surprise in store. She introduced them to a descendant of the couple who hid them, which Ms. Lane called “a watershed moment.”
Being in the place where her relatives’ lives were saved in the presence of family members of the couple who saved them convinced her: “I said I will make a movie. I will not stop until I finished.”
Ms. Lane has an acting background; at the time, she was enrolled in a master of fine arts theater program at UCLA. “I thought I wanted to be an acting professor at the university level,” she said. “But after I met this descendant of Arthur Schmidt and realized that I had to make a movie, I started pounding on all the documentary professors’ doors, saying, ‘Look, I’ve got this story to tell, and I don’t know how to make a movie. But will you help me?’”
They did — and so she did. Fittingly, her first principal photography was at the Schmidts’ entry ceremony at Yad Vashem. “To have your first chance to direct at a place like Yad Vashem was petrifying, because it is like a machine in a very best way. They do these ceremonies. And who am I to tell him to stop or start or whatever? You either catch what they’re doing on camera or you don’t. I don’t get to yell rolling out or cut or anything like that.
“So it was truly directing-school baptism by fire. We caught it. We got great footage that day.”
Home movies shot at the 1986 reunion by family members and later by Ms. Lane reveal a group of spunky survivors not tethered to a troubled past. My favorite moment was when Ruth Gilliana was chastised for smoking by her siblings, only to respond: “I gotta have one vice. I can’t have liquor anymore. I don’t have a boyfriend anymore.”
“They all led remarkable, wonderful lives,” Ms. Lane said. “My Uncle Alfons became a renowned physicist who spoke all over the world. My Aunt Ruth owned a hardware store. My Aunt Senta owned a bar. They all married. They all had children.”
Amazingly, thankfully, three of the siblings still are alive: Gertrude Chapman, born 1932, Judith Lal, born in 1937, and Beth’s mom, Bela/Ginger, born in 1939.
Learning more of her history and filming affected Ms. Lane’s relationship with her faith. “I grew up in a Jewish family,” she said. “I went to Hebrew school from nursery school through my confirmation in the middle of high school. I hawve always walked in the world as a proud Jewish woman, But it’s not how I lead in the world. I lead in the world as a woman.
“My relationship to my Judaism is very spiritual, but I can’t say that it’s religious. I light Shabbat candles every Friday night because it gives me a connection to my grandparents. And it just feels good to me. I go to High Holy Day services. I host a seder or attend someone else’s.”
Working on the film, she feels, “has giving me an even deeper soul connection to being a Jewish woman in the world. Certainly since October 7, I am giving tremendous voice to what it means to be Jewish. I do not consider Judaism a race. I consider it to be a religion that anyone can adapt if they so choose.
“For me, Judaism is a spiritual calling, a belief system of ethics and morals. That’s very important to me. For me, Judaism is kind of like a compass that helps me make decisions.”
“Unbroken” premiered on Netflix on April 23.
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