Susette’s Story

Directed By: Rodney S. Martel (First Feature Film) / 40 Minutes
USA / 2013 / English
Documentary / Biography
Territory Rights: WORLD-WIDE
Exhibition Format: Prores/QT

Synopsis

Like so many refugee families from Nazi Germany, Rod Martel’s experience was typical, if that is the word you can use for the horror visited upon a generation of German Jews. Most of his relatives were murdered, but his parents escaped to start a normal life in the United States. His fraternal grandparents fled to Australia, but he always wondered exactly what had happened to his maternal grandmother, Susette, (ex-wife of cinematographer/director Karl Freund) who had been swallowed up by the insidious Nazi war machine.

Supposedly she had died of typhus at Ravensbrück concentration camp. With the help of two researchers, Rod and his wife, accompany 93 year old Gerda, (Susette’s daughter) back to Berlin.

Follow them on their journey back into the past as they discover a truth even more evil than they had imagined in their quest to infuse meaning into a world that seems to defy logic and decency.