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Long Shadows: Stories From a Jewish Home

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Long Shadows: Stories From a Jewish Home. Video/2000/52 min. Written and directed by Kate Hampel. Produced by Melanie Coombs. Developed and produced with the assistance of Film Victoria. Produced in association with SBS Independent. A Melodrama Pictures Production. Distributed by Filmakers, Inc., 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016. 212-808-4980. Online: www.filmakers.com. E-mail: info{at}filmakers.com. Purchase $295, rental $75.

Long Shadows: Stories From a Jewish Home, documents a population of Holocaust survivors living in Montifiore Jewish Nursing Home in Melbourne, Australia. The video invites viewers inside the home and offers them glimpses of nursing home life, primarily from the perspective of residents. What are the concerns of this specific population of elders? How does the facility respond to their needs? How can a sense of community be fostered for these residents?

The video addresses these questions by introducing viewers to three residents (and two spouses) and letting them tell their stories of survival and adaptation. The central character is Harold, an extroverted and active elder who has found a real home in this nursing home. At one point he admits, "The whole set-up here has become my family. I'd be quite at a loss if I had to leave here." Harold functions as a kind of tour guide for the facility. His voice-over introduces viewers to this "United Nations" of approximately 600 residents in the nursing home. He notes the common threads that bind these residents—their religious beliefs and their refugee experiences. He is featured at a monthly meeting of residents, he writes poems for the nursing home's newsletter, he sings for the residents, and he has a special relationship with Sarah, a woman he met when he moved to the nursing home. "We really had a love affair," Harold admits. Now he visits her twice a day in the dementia unit. Harold explains that when her dementia surfaced, he dropped the romantic relationship.

Harold's parents died in the concentration camps, and his brother and he were sent to Australia because they were classified as "enemy aliens" (they were born in Vienna). Although Harold and his brother escaped the Nazis, his brother died of rheumatic fever at 26. "I'm still not quite over it," he admits. In an earlier scene he mentions one of the residents, a survivor of Auchswitz, who never talks about her experiences in the concentration camp. "She has been able to put it all behind her," he says, and then he maintains that in her case, she is "victorious." Like the other residents, Harold survived the Holocaust. He also survived the loss of his brother, and even now he is grieving the loss of Sarah, the woman he met in the nursing home, because of her increasing dementia. Yet Harold is thriving in the community of the nursing home. His presence in the video provides a sense of continuity, a sense of hope for regeneration in old age, and a testament to the adaptability, hardihood, and resilience of elders who have endured untold suffering and losses.

The video also gives voice to two other couples. In both cases the husband is the caregiver, and the wife is the resident. Born in a concentration camp, Eveylene is in her 60s, and thus she is at least a generation younger than most of the other residents. Consequently, she feels she does not belong to the cohort of elders she encounters every day. When her husband, Robert, visits her, he tries to be attentive to her needs; at the same time, he is dealing with issues of separation anxiety, loneliness, and loss of an accustomed role (as primary caregiver). Soon after she is admitted, a staff person meets with Robert and tries to help him be sympathetic and responsive to what Eveylene is going through as a new resident.

In fact, Eveylene's experience is a reminder of the vulnerability, uncertainty, and fearfulness of any new nursing home resident. The day she is admitted to the home, the shot selection and editing of this scene accurately represents her response to the sights and sounds of her new environment. In the scene both Eveylene and her roommate look fearful as the action unfolds around them. Yet Eveylene quietly goes about adapting to her new environment. Late in the video, she is shown sitting comfortably in her room with her roommate. Eveylene praises the staff, and her roommate admits, "A great part of the day we spend together." Perhaps the two are forming a bond that will help both adapt to their new environment. Near the end of the video a brief scene shows Eveylene's family having a birthday party in the nursing home. After singing to her, they all shout, "Who are you going to kiss?" She turns to Robert and kisses him. Later, the director cuts to a scene of Robert at home, and he begins to realize that he—perhaps more than Eveylene—needs to adapt to his wife's new living environment.

Dora and Harry are the second couple featured in the video. Dora was forced to work in slave labor camps in World War II; now she suffers from dementia. Harry visits her regularly and recalls that she was always a healthy woman. As to her dementia, "It was a sudden happening." She came home from shopping one day and did not know the house anymore. Dora and Harry express their faith through participation in rituals. In one scene, they light one of six candles to commemorate the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Afterwards, Harry tells Dora's story—her time in Auschwitz, then in a slave labor camp, and the brutal murders of her family. He begins to cry. "At least I could get it in. Now everyone knows her story." Harry needs to tell Dora's story for her—so that viewers can gain some perspective on how much she had to endure and so that her voice will be heard and remembered for their families and future generations.

The stories of these residents all focus on the themes of separation, isolation, pain, loss, and death; and the emotions behind these underlying themes also prevail for many of the residents in the nursing home environment. Early in the film, for example, one of the residents says, "Food is the most important issue for people who have starved." At a regular meeting of the residents, a staff person notes that everyone here "has suffered some starvation." Later in the video, a staff person, commenting on her experience with a demented resident, explains that she has learned much about the Holocaust by interacting with these residents. "I couldn't understand why people were so distrustful until I learned why." She notes that some residents are afraid of loud noises, afraid of any confined space (including the showers), or afraid of dogs (associating them with times when they were hunted by dogs). The video suggests that these residents have already gone through extraordinary traumas and terror; and now some feel they are reliving that time of horror—experiencing pain and not being able to do anything about it, or wanting the past "wiped out of their lives," as one staff person says—and yet feeling oppressed by the memories that haunt them. A staff person concludes, "These people are carrying an extra burden."

In order to convey a visual image of that burden, early in the video the director uses a special effect, slow dissolves, in which multiple images appear on the screen before one or more of them disappear (dissolve). In those scenes staff persons, residents, and spouses appear, then become shadows, and then either disappear or become whole again. This technique suggests that at certain times, some residents see others who are real and alive in the nursing home; then they fade from memory, or reappear, while others disappear from memory altogether. Perhaps this technique is meant to convey the metaphor of loss that is central to the experiences of these Holocaust survivors. Their here and now is always set against the long shadows of life and death in the concentration camps, work camps, or experiences as refugees.

The video makes a case for the importance of culturally competent care. In terms of the social environment, the Montefiori Nursing Home would receive high ratings for family caregiver involvement, cohesiveness of staff members, organization and teamwork, and ecological orientation of residents to the programs. Instructors of introductory psychology, adult development, social gerontology, or family study courses can use the video to introduce issues about ways to foster a sense of community in long-term-care settings—especially in the context of special populations of elders.

The stories of these Holocaust survivors would make compelling oral histories or case studies. The stories of the survivors—Eveylene, Harry, Dora, (as told by Harold), and even Harold—all share in common the theme that although their memories will always haunt them, in recounting their stories these elders find a measure of completeness, contentment, and acceptance of their fate. What was lost to them is made whole again—or in some respects redeemed—if not perfectly resolved. The video ends with a Shabbat service, where Harry and Dora are featured. She repeats one of the prayers, and Harry claps his hands—amazed that she remembers. Harry concludes in the last scene, "So I made it somehow. Life is not fair. But what can you do? It's your destiny, and you have to live it out the best way you can." The last shot shows Harry's hands folded in prayer—acting on his words in a gesture of faith.

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