Přežila jsem navzdory osudu – Jowel Joanne (2025)

A gripping personal confession about terrifying suffering. I survived the Warsaw ghetto, the gas chambers in Majdanek, the horrors of Auschwitz, and the total despair of Bergen-Belsen. I lost my parents, brothers, sisters, their life partners, and children... But for me, even though it's abnormal, it's not exceptional. The fact that I could continue to love, speak, write, eat toast, drink tea, and live my life is exceptional. Ella Blumenthal's story is a deeply moving and inspiring testimony of Holocaust survival and the subsequent finding of joy in life. As she herself says, the fact that she managed to continue loving, speaking, writing, eating toast, drinking tea, and living her life is far more exceptional to her than the suffering she endured in the Warsaw ghetto, the gas chambers of Majdanek, the horrors of Auschwitz, and the despair of Bergen-Belsen, where she lost her entire family. Her journey from the flames of Nazi camps, through Poland, Paris, Palestine, and finally to Cape Town in South Africa, is truly a Herculean feat. Ella transformed from a stateless refugee into a pillar of the community. Despite the shadow of shame and trauma that so many survivors faced after the war, she managed to create a happy home where few knew the full extent of her suffering.