Documentary Reveals Filmmaker’s Mother’s Hidden Holocaust Past in Nazi Forced Labor Camp

Journalist and filmmaker Marisa Fox spent 15 years uncovering the true story of her late mother, who died in 1993. Her mother had long claimed she was a heroic teenage spy and saboteur in Palestine during World War II, smuggling weapons against British forces and never portraying herself as a victim. However, inconsistencies in her tales—such as claiming to be 13 in 1939 despite a 1935 birth year—prompted doubts. A hint from a dementia-affected great-aunt in 2010 about a ‘hidden identity’ launched Fox’s quest. Through global research, survivor interviews, and a wartime journal from the Gabersdorf camp, Fox discovered her mother (real name Hela Hocherman) was actually around 14 when deported from Poland to the Nazi forced labor camp Gabersdorf, where hundreds of teenage Jewish girls endured brutal work, dehumanization, and escalating horrors. These included sexual exploitation by British POWs via Red Cross packages, later rape and trafficking by SS guards as ‘racial defilement’ went undocumented, and assaults by Soviet liberators. Many girls formed a supportive sisterhood and secretly documented experiences in a collective diary, where Fox’s mother wrote defiantly. Postwar, she emigrated to Palestine, joined an insurgent group (viewed by some as terrorism), then moved to the US, changed her name and age, married, and hid her camp trauma—possibly due to shame over survival, abuse, or illegitimacy. The film highlights survivor testimonies from women in their 80s and 90s, most now deceased, and argues shame belongs to perpetrators, not victims. It premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival in January 2026.