Growing up in Israel I was inundated with images and stories from the Holocaust. It was everywhere-- at school, in our books, our parents’ friends, the government, the museums, the memorials. I thought I knew all about it and didn’t want to hear more.

When my friend Margrit told me that she was the daughter of survivors, and that I should read her parents’ collection of love letters from the camps, I was curious. Love in the Holocaust?

The letters blew me away. The daily, precise details of trying to keep one’s dignity, the will power that it took to get up in the morning and face the grim reality of their existence, the cheerfulness and hopes for the future, were deeply moving. The notion that even under these horrendous circumstances there was still love, jealousy and passion proved that the human spirit cannot be easily broken, that the power of love is measurable—in life and in death.

The letters were an eye opener and an inspiration. It was a story worth telling, a quilt worth weaving, a heart worth exposing.

My biggest challenge as a filmmaker was, how to visualize a love story that took place over 60 years ago? Could a 94-year-old Jack and an 84-year-old Ina carry a movie?

Five years in the making, hundreds of hours of archival footage, countless trips to Westchester NY (the Polak’s home), several journeys to Holland, and many, many late nights finally came together.

Seeing the film with an audience, especially at the United Nations, confirmed that the couple’s charm and survival instincts transcend age and time. That life is worth living, that their story is as timely now as it was then— that in fact, it is not a film about the Holocaust, it’s about an intimate, personal experience that could have happened to any one of us. I realized that if we can all remember that, such Genocide will never happen again.