I DIED IN AUSCHWITZ

I Died in Auschwitz is a feature-length screenplay by Roger Grunwald, adapted from, reimagining, and expanding his solo stage drama of the same name. The story follows several interconnected lives shaped by war and its long aftermath.

At the film’s center is Schmuel Berkowicz, a Polish Jewish survivor. As a boy in Bialystok, he grows up in a close-knit community, forming deep bonds with Lola, a Jewish girl, and Bronek, a Catholic boy. That world is destroyed by the German invasion. Jewish families are driven from their homes, many are murdered in the streets, businesses looted, and more than 1,000 Jewish men and boys locked inside the city’s Great Synagogue and burned alive. Schmuel escapes but is forced into hiding, then into the ghetto, and ultimately deported to Auschwitz.

In the camp, Schmuel survives through a combination of endurance and luck under unimaginable conditions. Liberation does not bring peace. Scenes of his wartime survival are intercut with his later life in New York, where he struggles to build stability while haunted by memory and loss.

Also central to the story is Gerda, Schmuel’s wife and a fellow Auschwitz survivor. They meet in a displaced persons camp after liberation—two shattered lives finding solace and steadiness in one another after years of enduring horror. Although their marriage keeps them from drowning in the past, the emotional damage both experienced haunts their lives. Shared catastrophe and a son bind them together, but the instincts that kept them alive in Auschwitz make intimacy and love next to impossible.

As part of her routine at an amateur night comedy performance at a Catskills resort, Gerda courageously includes an incident she experienced at Auschwitz. With dark, unsettling humor, she exposes the cruelty and absurdity of camp life before a stunned audience. Bringing that memory onto the stage is her way of confronting what happened—an attempt to claim control over experiences that refuse to loosen their grip.

To deal with his emotional emptiness, Schmuel begins an intense relationship with Lorna, an African American woman shaped by poverty, racism, and abuse. Both Schmuel and Gerda are unable to escape the trauma and emotional wounds they carry. If Gerda turns to performance to wrestle with her past, Schmuel turns to intimacy—seeking in Lorna a connection strong enough to take away his pain and fill the emptiness he cannot name. Their bond is tender and urgent, but it cannot survive the weight of the past or the violent control another man holds over her. The relationship collapses, driving Schmuel toward profound despair.

Running parallel is the story of Christoph Heilmann, a decorated German army officer whose private life embodies the regime’s contradictions. His father is Jewish; his mother is Catholic. Raised to believe in duty and patriotism, Christoph convinces himself that loyalty and military service will protect his family from Nazi racial laws. Instead, his Jewish father—once a celebratedWorld War I hero and respected surgeon—is deported to Sachsenhausen and reduced to forced labor.

On the Eastern Front, Christoph’s beliefs begin to shatter. Gravely wounded during the Third Battle of Kharkov, he is discovered by a Jewish Soviet soldier who is moments away from killing him. Barely conscious, Christoph haltingly reveals that he too is Jewish. The soldier hesitates and spares him—only to be killed moments later. The encounter leaves Christoph shaken and forces him to confront the cost of silence and compromise.

Interwoven with Christoph’s story is his relationship with Klara, a German Jewish artist living as a refugee in occupied Paris. Christoph believes marriage and a newly obtained “Certificate of German Blood” will protect her. For a brief time, it does. After he is redeployed, Klara discovers she is pregnant and is betrayed by a former lover who threatens to denounce her. Facing an impossible choice, she entrusts her infant daughter, Adele, to a Catholic orphanage under a false name before disappearing into hiding.

Through these intersecting lives—Schmuel, Gerda, Christoph, Klara, and those bound to them—I Died in Auschwitz explores survival, moral choice, love, and consequence. It asks not only what it takes to endure history, but what it costs to live with what one has endured, done, or failed to stop.