Remembrance 2011

Two timelines braid the story together: a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland in 1944, and bustling New York City in 1976.

In 1944, Tomasz Limanowski, [Mateusz Damięcki], a captured member of the Polish resistance, works inside the camp to aid the resistance from the inside. His brutal labor includes supervising the distribution of loaves of bread, while his true task is to photograph the camp’s horrific war crimes and smuggle the negatives out to reveal them to the outside world.

This dangerous work goes on alongside Hannah Silberstein, [Alice Dwyer], a young German Jew in the same work camp who has just learned she is pregnant. Every night, Tomasz uses a bottle of vodka to bribe an officemate so that he and Hannah can be alone in the office where Tomasz toils among the SS, and they share bread that Tomasz has stolen for them. The hidden romance flourishes under the constant threat of discovery.

The narrative then shifts to 1976, opening with Hannah Levine, [Dagmar Manzel], living in Brooklyn, New York, with a prosperous husband and their grown daughter. She is stunned to see Tomasz, whom she believed dead for thirty years, appearing in a television interview as he recounts his survival. The moment crowds her with repressed memories, and her mind reels as she grapples with the past while trying to maintain the present for her family. She cannot keep her mind fully present at the dinner party and quietly reaches for the Red Cross, seeking news of him for the first time since 1946.

Back in 1944, Tomasz begins to implement a daring plan for their salvation. He secures an SS uniform and forged papers, then orchestrates a move that requires Hannah to follow him out of the camp. Tomasz’s cover wavers as a guard mutters that he would like to rape Hannah, but Tomasz—speaking only a limited German—keeps control and maintains the illusion. The pair escape, walking past guards and into the woods, where they push further toward safety.

Their flight leads them to Tomasz’s hometown and to his mother Stefania’s house. Stefania Limanowska, [Susanne Lothar], resents Hannah’s presence, doubting the choice of bringing a German Jew into the family, and she threatens trouble for them all. Hannah endures a brutal night as Stefania’s suspicion burns hot, and she ultimately leaves Stefania’s house, taking with her a photo of Tomasz that his mother had kept in a place of honor. With no viable option, Tomasz sends Hannah to Magdalena’s home for safety; Magdalena, Tomasz’s sister-in-law, [Joanna Kulig], agrees to shelter her while Tomasz heads off to Warsaw to deliver the precious photographs to his brother in the homeland army.

The years that follow are filled with strain and mistrust. Stefania comes to resent Magdalena, and the Russians eventually sweep Czeslav and Magdalena away to a Soviet work camp, leaving Hannah and Stefania behind. Hannah’s own health and safety become precarious, and she nearly dies in the harsh winter before a Red Cross van rescues her.

Returning to 1976, the Red Cross finally tracks Tomasz down in Poland, and Hannah musters the courage to call him. Their conversation—initially in German, then more easily in English—remains cautious but hopeful as they confirm that neither has forgotten the other, and Hannah reveals she had been pregnant. The call leaves both shaken, and a flashback reveals that after Hannah returned to Berlin, Tomasz returned home only to learn that Czeslav and Magdalena had been sent away to a work camp, and that Hannah’s presumed death had forever altered their worlds.

Back in the present, Hannah’s husband urges her to seek out the man who saved her. She travels to Poland to find Tomasz, who now has a grown daughter of his own and lives apart from his wife. The film closes on a poignant, hopeful note: Hannah steps off a bus as Tomasz arrives by car to pick her up, signaling a possible new beginning built on the courage and bond forged years earlier.

• Rebecca Levine, [Shantel VanSanten], is mentioned here as the couple’s grown daughter in 1976, highlighting the long arc of a family rebuilt across time and distance.