A Shtetl in the Caribbean

Mark Wiznitzer and Tsale Kirzner, descendants of Eastern European Jews who fled to Curaçao before and after the Holocaust, venture back to the birthplaces of their ancestors in Ukraine and Belarus. Their search inevitably confronts them with the dark history of pogroms, anti-Semitism and the Nazi invasion. This road movie takes us through the US, Israel, Eastern Europe and Curaçao and shows Mark and Tsale’s discoveries, courage, and despair. The journey helps them understand the sacrifices their parents made to give them normal childhoods. Their lives have been shaped and formed by the darkest pages of European history: AntiSemitism and the Holocaust. Both in Ukraine and in Belarus, their family histories seems to have been erased. All that remains from the thriving Jewish community is a burial site, a dilapidated old synagogue and a monument – faint traces of the town’s gruesome history.