Documentary uncovers journalist’s mother’s hidden Second World War past

Journalist Marisa Fox has directed a documentary, My Underground Mother, that traces how her mother concealed a different wartime identity; the film screens at the New York Jewish Film Festival on 19 and 20 January before a wider release later this year. Fox grew up hearing her mother’s dramatic tales of being sent to Palestine as a teenager and joining a radical underground, but noticed inconsistencies from an early age.

After her mother’s death in 1993, a 2010 remark from a dementia-afflicted great-aunt — “Your mother had a hidden identity” — prompted Fox’s 15-year investigation. She says she discovered her mother, born Hela Hocherman, had lied about her age and name and actually remained in Poland for the duration of the war, where her birth mother was sent to Auschwitz and she was taken to the Gabersdorf forced labour camp.

Fox assembled testimony from scores of former inmates she tracked down in countries including Sweden, Australia, the US and Israel; 18 of those women appear in the film. The women’s journal from the camp, to which about 60 girls contributed, includes entries by Fox’s mother. The film presents accounts of sexual barter with British PoWs, and, after 1943, SS-run practices including nude inspections and the selection of women for sexual exploitation; Fox also says Russian liberators violated girls at Gabersdorf.

Key Topics

Culture, Marisa Fox, My Underground Mother, Gabersdorf, Auschwitz, Hela Hocherman