by Annette Basile
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Eddy Boas
Intro:
Distressing, powerful and thought-provoking…
Eddy Boas sits in a room lined with books, an assortment of native Australian dried flowers in a vase next to him. Copies of his own book, I’m Not a Victim I Am a Survivor, are propped up near the vase as he calmly and lucidly tells his story about his childhood in Holland and surviving Nazi concentration camps, and later finding a home in Sydney’s east.
This eloquent documentary allows Boas to tell his powerful story entirely in his own words, uninterrupted by talking heads. It features incredible archival footage that covers not only The Netherlands during the time of the Nazi occupation, but the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Even if you’ve seen such footage before, it remains profoundly disturbing.
Eddy, his mother Suze, father Philip and brother Samuel (known as Boy) endured so much suffering that you wonder how Boas stayed sane – how he coped is not covered here, the film keeps its focus on documenting the past.
Born in January 1940, just a few months after the start of World War II, the Boas family lived in The Hague – part of a large Jewish community that lived and worked harmoniously with the Dutch. As the war progressed, Dutch Jews saw their freedoms shrink, and when Eddy was aged three, he was sent to the camps, first Westerbork in The Netherlands and then Bergen-Belsen in Germany. There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, instead the inmates died of starvation, typhus and despair. Boas makes the point that no matter how someone died in the camps, it was murder, and he’s right.
He tells of taking clothes off dead bodies and of his father Philip stealing (Eddy’s word) off the horses he worked with, so the family could have a little more than the weak turnip soup that the prisoners were given. Philip had once been part of the Dutch cavalry and his experience with horses led the Nazis to give him the ‘job’ of transporting the dead bodies on a horse-drawn cart.
Eddy Boas is an impressive human being, it’s easy to connect with him and marvel at his strength, courage and extraordinary story of survival. There’s also another story behind the scenes – Iranian-Australian director (and actress) Janet Shay has spoken of the “hostile” worldview she was raised with, taught to hate outsiders. After coming to Australia and living amongst other cultures, things changed. “Instead of mistrusting Jewish people, I felt called to listen, learn, and amplify their voices,” she says.
Despite the low budget, Shay has expertly balanced archival footage with Eddy’s narration.
Distressing, powerful and thought-provoking, Reflections of Courage is an important documentary that ends with words of hope and even triumph.
