By Janis Siegel , JTNews Correspondent
On Feb. 10, Seattleite Cecelia Benzaquen, inside a packed movie house in Berlin, sat on the edge of her seat as she waited to watch the premiere of a Holocaust survival story. The Academy Award-nominated In Darkness, for which a production crew built a replica of the 1943 sewer system in Lvov, Poland, is special not because of the subject matter and the compelling story, but because of how personal a story it is for Benzaquen: It is the true story of her father, her mother, and other Jews who hid from the Nazis for 14 months.
“It took me right into the sewer, living what they were living,” said Benzaquen, who is the wife of Sephardic Bikur Cholim’s Rabbi Simon Benzaquen and the daughter of two of the main characters in the movie, Mundek Margulies and Klara Keller. Benzaquen answered questions for JTNews while in London for its premiere there.
Directed by two-time Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland, with 17 feature films to her credit, including the Golden Globe winner, Europa, Europa (1990), this is Holland’s third Holocaust film and it’s already a Critics’ Choice Movie Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
Regarding In Darkness, Holland wrote in her director’s statement that she wanted to make a movie that would “last.”
“It is a gripping and emotional story,” she wrote. “I held my breath during some parts of the film.”
Holland insisted on having the actors speak the six languages spoken in Lvov — Polish, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian and Balak, the dialect of Polish spoken in Lvov at the time.
“It was absolutely believable and authentic,” Benzaquen said.
Benzaquen, her brother, and the 7-year-old Jewish girl in the movie who lived through the ordeal, Kristina, with whom Benzaquen said she is very close, were the only descendants at the premiere.
“The film was given an amazing reception in Berlin,” said Benzaquen. “The German people try to “˜make it better,’ almost apologizing for the horrors that went on in Germany, and showing an interest in how the Jews were rescued.
“The film is also being shown in nearly all the cinemas in Poland, where the people see this as theirs because the hero was one of them.”
In Darkness’s main protagonist is Leopold Socha, a Lvov sewer worker, father, husband, and small time thief, persuaded by his affluent Ukrainian friend to enrich himself by ferreting out Jews hiding in sewers. When Socha finds a group of Jews, Mundek (Benzaquen’s future father) Klara (Benzaquen’s future mother), a couple of children, and other adults desperate to escape the Lvov ghetto as the Nazis begin its evacuation, he takes their money and agrees to hide them in the sewers. Socha evolves into more than an advocate for the group.
When Margulies falls madly in love the young Klara, Socha helps him and risks his own life by aiding Margulies in a frustrated attempt to rescue Klara’s sister from the nearby Janowska Camp, at great risk to his own safety.
“My father left the sewer for three days, to take her out of there and back into the sewer, but she would not go with him,” Benzaquen said. “My mother’s sister died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp after being taken out of the Janowska Camp.”
Socha would save Margulies’s life by killing a German soldier who was poised to expose the group.
Described in the movie notes as “a con man who hides deep reserves of courage under a breezy manner,” Benzaquen said her father was orphaned at 11 years old, one of six children always buying and selling in the streets. He eventually became the local barber, she said, but most of all she saw her father as a true mensch who helped her mother through her life of lingering pain.
“It was very difficult for my mother to live a normal life,” Benzaquen said. “They did not talk about what they went through. If someone started a conversation about hiding in the sewer, my mother would walk out of the room. But my father was her hero and he helped her through it. She was a warm, emotional and extremely caring person.”
Benzaquen’s parents left no letters, diaries, or notes about their time under Lvov, within the maze of its sewers, although their story was first published in a 1991 book by Robert Marshall, In the Sewers of Lvov. Following that, the British Broadcasting Company produced a documentary about the saga called A Light in the Dark.
“I feel so proud that this story has been made public,” added Benzaquen, “and so proud of my hero father.”