Three brothers and their sister take a heart-tugging journey to Israel and Austria to trace the footsteps of their father, Joseph Fisher, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust. Their odyssey started when Fisher’s filmmaker son, David, discovered his late father’s diary. It took some doing, but David was able to convince his siblings to journey with him to Austria and the site of the concentration camp where their dad was held — he ended up in Israel after the war.
They get to explore the area where the concentration camp, Gusen, once stood — today the area contains middle-class homes. They also tour the camp’s dark tunnels, where Joseph once slaved. “I did not want to read [the diary] yet felt compelled to do so. I learned of . . . beatings, hunger, cannibalism, homosexuality,” David says. The siblings react with humor and horror to what they discover. So will many viewers of this self-indulgent but engaging work.