The Touch of an Angel

The poetic documentary, shocking testimony and unbelievable reminiscences imprinted in Oswiecim-born, little boy Henryk Schoenker, who narrowly escaped from World War II. Was another scenario for Holocaust ever possible? Had it been probable to save thousands Silesian Jews before the idea of the cruelest death camp was conceived? Would the history of Jews in Nazi occupied Poland have been different if the western world hadn't responded to Holocaust atrocities with such a shocking lack of interest? Henryk Schoenker, a son of the last chairman of the Jewish Community in Oswiecim reveals to the world an unknown history of Jews' legal opportunity to emigrate. Before the idea of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was conceived, the Office for Jewish Immigration to Palestine was established in Oswiecim in autumn of 1939. It was set up on the orders of German military authorities by Leo Schoenker, the film's hero's father. Thousands of people from all areas of Silesia began to arrive to the ordinary town of Oswiecim in the hope to be saved. Schoenker was called to Berlin to report to Adolf Eichmann which he did enthusiastically, presenting a matter-of-fact plan of international action. Unfortunately, the idea of the legal emigration came to nothing because of the world's indifference. Today Henryk Schoenker comes back to his family's ruined residence that echoes those distant events. The film's hero has been completely deaf since the war. "Horrible sounds of my childhood got inside me as if I were a seashell. Perhaps that is why I got deaf, so I would never forget them" - he says in the movie, following the footsteps of his six years' time ordeal of war.