Maya Sarfaty’s award-winning documentary about the romance between an Auschwitz prisoner and a Nazi will be released in North America this fall. Deadline confirms “Love It Was Not” has been acquired by Greenwich Entertainment ahead of its Hot Docs premiere later this month. It previously screened at DocAviv and IDFA.
“Love It Was Not” recounts the relationship between Helena Citron, who as a teenager was one of the first 1,000 people to be taken to Auschwitz, and Franz Wunsch, an SS officer. “Risking execution if caught, they went on with their forbidden romantic relationship for two and a half years until the war ended and the camp was liberated,” the source details. “Thirty years later, a letter arrives from Wunsch’s wife asking Helena to ‘return the favor’ — testify on Wunsch’s behalf at his war crimes trial. Faced with an impossible decision, Helena must choose. Will she help the man who brutalized so many lives, but saved hers?”
Sarfaty went through the archives of Israel’s Yad Vashem and the Shoah Foundation as research for the doc, listening to Auschwitz survivors’ recordings for any mention of Citron and Wunsch’s relationship. In the film, “reconstructions of key scenes take the form of multi-layered photomontages using only historical photos and archival images from the time,” Deadline notes.
“Making this film was a long and challenging journey,” Sarfaty said. “It began with a single image of an inmate in Auschwitz, went through a small apartment in Williamsburg, NY, continued to the court room in Vienna, and rolled into the private archives of an SS officer in Switzerland. Knowing that the film is now coming to America makes me both proud and excited. I have no doubt audiences across the states will appreciate the larger-than-life love story of Helena, the Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz, and her captor the SS officer Franz Wunsch.”
“Love It Was Not” is based on Sarfaty’s Student Academy Award-winning short “The Most Beautiful Woman.” It took home the top prize, the Frank Lowy Award for the Best Israeli Film, at DocAviv last year.
Shorts “Yom Yom,” “Heavy Duty,” and “Overtime” are among Sarfaty’s other directing credits.
