In Production.
Writer & Director: Bernard Dichek
Producers: Osnat Trabelsi, Hansjürgen Schmölzer
A co-production of TRABELSI PRODUCTIONS and BSX Schmölzer GmbH.
Why did displaced people smile in their photographs?
Bernard Dichek, the son of Holocaust survivors, makes an observation that leads him on a detective-like journey across Europe: After the war, when his parents once again found themselves in camps as unwanted Displaced Persons in the American occupation zone, they took photographs of themselves and other refugees — images that show them strong and happy. Why?
Their smiling faces conceal their true suffering. Then as now. Through these photographs, they were likely trying to prove to the world: We are fine. We will not be a burden to anyone. They even concealed their pain from one another. But they paid a high price for it.
THE SMILE OF THE DISPLACED follows Dichek on his search for the places where these photographs were taken. He speaks with historians and with other children of survivors — as well as with Germans and Austrians of the same generation whose parents also remained silent about the realities of the postwar years. On both sides, the past was rarely addressed. To this day, the question remains: What happened during those in-between years about which so little was spoken?
The traumas of war and displacement were inherited — often unspoken, yet deeply felt in the generations that followed.