Netflix has added UnBroken, an award-winning documentary film telling the incredible story of how seven Jewish siblings escaped Nazi Germany.
After their mother's incarceration and murder at Auschwitz, the seven Weber siblings, aged 6-18, against all odds, managed to evade capture and certain death and eventually escape to America.
The film, added to Netflix in the US on Wednesday, April 23, is made by Beth Lane, making her directorial debut. Beth is the daughter of the youngest Weber sibling, and she embarks on an international quest to uncover answers about the plight of her family.
The makers say about the children: "After being hidden in a laundry hut by a benevolent German farmer, the children spent two years on their own in war-torn Germany. Emboldened by their father's mandate that they 'always stay together,' the children used their own cunning instincts to fight through hunger, loneliness, rape, bombings and fear.
"Climactically separated from their father, the siblings are forced to declare themselves as orphans in order to escape to a new life in America. Unbeknownst to them, this salvation would become what would finally tear them apart, not to be reunited for another 40 years."
Beth talks to surviving siblings to hear their amazing testimony about what happened as they followed their courageous and harrowing path to freedom.
In the trailer, Beth says: "I never thought they would tell me their story. But one fragment at a time they give me something to hold onto."
In a statement, Beth said: "My mother, Ginger, lived a life that mirrored Job’s trials. Born into poverty in Berlin, she watched the Gestapo shove her mother into a black car, never to return. She became one of the 'Weber Siblings,' seven hidden children of the Holocaust who survived against all odds.
"After the war, they immigrated to America through the Jewish Children’s Bureau, only to be separated and placed in different foster homes. My mother was adopted, and social workers advised her new parents to sever ties with her biological family to help her 'acclimate.' She always told my siblings and me that we would never meet her biological brothers and sisters.
"But in 1986, 40 years after her emigration, that changed. Mom reunited with Alfons, Senta, Ruth, Gertrude, Renee, and Judith — siblings who had stayed connected and quietly tracked her whereabouts. I learned of the reunion after the fact, living in another state, and often wondered what it must have felt like to share a moment of acknowledgment — a quiet recognition of survival and gratitude for those who helped along the way."
Today [April 23] Beth posted on Instagram: "On Holocaust Remembrance Day we honor the past by sharing stories that must never be forgotten. UnBroken is one of those stories."
The film was originally released in theaters in 2023, and it won a string of audience awards, including at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina.
The makers will be hoping UnBroken can get an even wider audience now that it is available on Netflix in America.
