Arts & Entertainment
Documentary Traces the Journey of 7 Siblings Who Survived the Holocaust and Settled in Chicago
At just 3 years old, Ginger Lane lost her mother, who was abducted by the Gestapo and taken to Auschwitz. In the years following, Lane lived on a remote farm in Worin, Germany, separated from her father. By the time she turned 6, she had experienced a whole life’s worth of instability, persecution and loss.
“I didn’t know that I would never see her again,” Lane recalled of her mother.
In 1946, Lane, along with all six of her siblings, arrived in New York on the S.S. Marine Flasher. They would go on to live out full lives in Chicago.
Bela Weber (Ginger Lane) is photographed for an ID card, Berlin, 1946. (Courtesy of the Weber Family Personal Archives)
Lane (born Bela Weber), her brother Alfons and her sisters Senta, Gertrude, Judith, Renee and Ruth make up the largest known group of siblings to have survived the Holocaust without being separated.
Lane and her sister Judith are the last surviving Weber siblings, but their family’s story has been preserved in “UnBroken,” a recent documentary by Lane’s daughter, Beth Lane.
The Weber family will mark 80 years since arriving in the U.S. with a May 20 screening of “UnBroken” at the Wayfarer Theater in Highland Park, hosted by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
Beth Lane grew up without knowing her aunts and uncles or the story of how her mother came to the U.S.
“I first learned that my mom was adopted when I was 6 years old, which is the same age that she was when she came to this country,” Beth Lane said. “I learned that she had six other siblings, but that I would never meet them.”
Despite initial reluctance from her mother, Beth Lane eventually did meet her aunts and uncles, and in 2017, the Lanes traveled to Germany to reconnect with their roots. She recalled feeling overwhelmed while visiting the farm where her mother hid from the Gestapo for two years.
“Our hosts that particular day had a surprise for us, and they invited a descendant of the farmers to meet us,” Beth Lane said. “It was extraordinary. I felt like I was touching the DNA of the man who enabled mom’s survival and our ability to be here.”
Using her uncle Aflons’ notes as a roadmap, Beth Lane spent two and a half years piecing together the full journey the Weber siblings took from the beginning of the Holocaust to its end, documenting it all in “UnBroken.”
“It was pretty incredible to feel like I was walking in their steps of how they started in Berlin, went out to Worin, and then eventually made their way down to Indersdorf and then up to Bremerhaven, where the S.S. Marine Flasher departed,” Beth Lane said.
Filmmaker Beth Lane and her mother, Holocaust survivor Ginger Lane, behind the scenes on the set of “UnBroken.” (Courtesy of UnBroken Productions)
In 96 minutes, Beth Lane captures the unlikely union of her Catholic and Jewish grandparents, the unexpected heroism of the Webers’ German neighbor and their difficult transition into American life in Chicago.
Tickets for the screening at Wayfarer are sold out, but the film can be streamed on Netflix.
