"I was in the camps with my wife and my girlfriend," says the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor Jack Polak in Michèle Ohayon's documentary "Steal a Pencil for Me." "And believe me, it wasn't easy."

"Pencil" recounts Mr. Polak's stint in Nazi camps — first in a work-transit camp outside the Dutch village of Westerbork, then in Bergen-Belsen — alongside Manja Polak, the wife he hoped to divorce after the war, and Ina Soep, the girlfriend he adored.

The title comes from Mr. Polak's request to Ms. Soep in Bergen-Belsen, where Ms. Polak (who had a boyfriend herself) forbade her husband to communicate with his mistress. Ms. Soep, employed as a camp stenographer, was able to comply.

What makes Ms. Ohayon's movie special is its recognition that epic horrors don't erase private dramas. Graphic atrocity footage and revealing anecdotes about the Dutch Jewish experience in World War II coexist organically with the film’s central love triangle.

Mr. Polak and Ms. Soep, Manhattan residents who have been married for 60 years, narrate their experiences with frank wit. The knowledge that their love endured infuses hope into a grim tale, though one can't help thinking that if Ms. Polak, who died in 1995, had chimed in, the glow would be less rosy.