Auschwitz

In 1986, when her mother died at the age of sixty-four, Eleanor Reissa went through all of her belongings. In the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer, she found an old leather purse. Inside that purse was a large wad of folded papers. They were letters. Fifty-six of them. In German. Written in 1949. Letters from her father to her mother, when they were courting. Just four years earlier, he had fought to stay alive in Auschwitz and on the Death March -- while she had spent the war years suffering in Uzbekistan. Thirty years later, Eleanor finally had the letters translated. The particulars of those letters sent her off on an unimaginable adventure into the past.

“Return To Auschwitz” is the story of one man’s survival of the Nazi death camp. The documentary details the experiences of retired SUNY Plattsburgh professor Vladimir Munk as he returned to the concentration camp in early 2020. WAMC’s North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley sat down with the filmmakers and Munk – now 96 years old.