Mrs. Birn writes of her experiences making the film:
When my niece Jessica organized our visit to Dordogne I expected an interesting and valuable experience but never the overwhelming findings that we encountered during the hectic last week in August. The most shocking and horrific moment for me took place at the Archives of the Department of Dordogne where I went with my daughter Anne-Emanuelle. There, we were shown the two documents that described my father and mother being interrogated, having to confess that they had crossed the Demarcation Line illegally, that they were Jews, that they had committed a crime in leaving Paris without getting official permission, stating that they had done so for fear of reprisals taken by Germans against "Israelites".
What also shocked me was hearing from a contemporary of mine, a little kid like me in 1942, who said I had told him THEN that I was not afraid because if the Germans came we would take a pill and die right away and never suffer. For the past 40 years or more, I had erased that knowledge, I thought my mother told us AFTER THE WAR that she would have given the whole family cyanide if the Nazis had captured us. In other words, I did not remember that I knew at the time. Now I understand better the deep fear of being denounced and caught that my parents must have experienced during the 5 years of WW II.
The testimony of the village mayor's son and daughter showed me how deeply their father had been involved and how he risked his and his family's lives in trying to save us.
I was also intensely moved by interviews with the two ladies living downstairs from us, two very young women during the war, one of them who would have been entrusted with our care in case my parents were caught and disappeared. I had no idea. The other neighbor had a different story. Her husband was selling wood to the Germans, so she stayed away from us, and we from her. That, I remembered.
I will never forget the welcome we got from the farmer's family where my father "worked". The old farmer's wife kept on saying that my father was not working but spending most of his time camouflé ("in hiding"), and then the grand-children took us to the awful place, a humid cellar where Papa had to hide in case of imminent round-up or other danger.
Everyone in the village told us how scared they were of their neighbors, of everyone else, because of the activities of the Maquis, the Collaborateurs and the Germans. You never knew whom to trust or whom to fear. Surviving was indeed a daily miracle for our family.
29 Months in Exile Copyright © 1997-2005 Nathaniel Bornstein and Jessica Mendels.