My Underground Mother

FAIN: TR-280540-21

Center for Independent Documentary, Inc. (Newton, MA 02458-1341)
Marisa Fox (Project Director: January 2021 to September 2023)

Development of a feature-length documentary film exploring the lives and legacies of women survivors of Nazi slave-labor camps.

My Underground Mother, a feature-length documentary, will explore the tenacity, unspoken trauma and resilience of women survivors of Nazi slave labor, focusing on a Polish Jewish woman who changed her name after immigrating to the United States and kept her World War II experiences a secret. Twenty years after her death, her daughter discovers a page her mother wrote in a collective, Holocaust diary and sets out to unravel the truth about her hidden past.

Associated Products

My Underground Mother work sample (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: My Underground Mother work sample
Writer: Marisa Fox
Director: Marisa Fox
Producer: Deborah Shaffer
Producer: Marisa Fox
Abstract: This is the latest work sample of our in-production film, edited by Rachel Reichman. It highlights some of the film’s main subjects who help project director Marisa Fox uncover her late mother’s secret past and the larger, overlooked history of Jewish women’s slave labor camps in Silesia and Sudetenland during the Holocaust. A journalist, Fox applies an investigative approach to her quest, moving past family members, who are conflicted and tight-lipped about her mother’s secret. Instead, she turns to historical archives, scholars, survivors and witnesses, as her detective-like search unravels with suspense. Fox also finds a survivor in Berlin, who road-trips with her to the former Gabersdorf site. There, she hears camp songs that ring with defiance but also an eerie sexual subtext. At the core of the film is the collective camp diary in which Fox’s mother wrote , which reveals an empowering story of sisterhood, resistance and faith, but it also confirms what Fox suspects may have kept her mother from speaking of her experiences --sexual violence. Because there is no historical footage of the camp, viewers are given access to this unseen world through visual renderings by artist Molly Schwartz, who will animate them for the completed film. We also hear passages read by teenage girls in Poland. The subjects are indelible characters, each different from the other, living around the world, but joined together by a deep trauma they never previously shared. These are the last witnesses of a chapter of history that is well represented, but that shockingly neglected this narrative. Few filmmakers have explored the Holocaust through the lens of gender, which is one reason why My Underground Mother stands to make significant contributions to the humanities. The scholars, including last living Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, help us understand why women’s testimonies were buried as Fox seeks resolution.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://vimeo.com/787235394 password: Gabersdorf23
Primary URL Description: This is the latest work sample of our in-production film, edited by Rachel Reichman. It highlights some of the film’s main subjects who help project director Marisa Fox uncover her late mother’s secret past and the larger, overlooked history of Jewish women’s slave labor camps in Silesia and Sudetenland during the Holocaust. A journalist, Fox applies an investigative approach to her quest, moving past family members, who are conflicted and tight-lipped about her mother’s secret. Instead, she turns to historical archives, scholars, survivors and witnesses, as her detective-like search unravels with suspense. Fox also finds a survivor in Berlin, who road-trips with her to the former Gabersdorf site. There, she hears camp songs that ring with defiance but also an eerie sexual subtext. At the core of the film is the collective camp diary in which Fox’s mother wrote , which reveals an empowering story of sisterhood, resistance and faith, but it also confirms what Fox suspects may have kept
Secondary URL: http://myundergroundmother.com/
Secondary URL Description: This is our redesigned website, which gives a synopsis and overview of the film's main topic and historical themes, introduces viewers to some of the documentary's main subjects, offers production stills and a description of the visual/creative approach and highlights some of our main grantors, including the NEH.
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

My Underground Mother script (Script)
Title: My Underground Mother script
Writer: Marisa Fox
Director: Marisa Fox
Producer: Deborah Shaffer
Producer: Marisa Fox
Abstract: This is our latest script of our feature-length documentary that highlights director Marisa Fox's search for her late mother's hidden past, which leads her to excavate a larger, historical backstory of Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust. At the heart of the film is a collective diary from women's camp Gabersdorf in Sudetenland, where Fox's mother was imprisoned for nearly 5 years, along with 400 mainly Polish Jewish teenage girls from her home turf, who were worked nearly to death manufacturing textiles for the German military. The diary exposes the sexual trauma these young women experienced, but also their agency, sisterhood and how writing became a form of resistance and a means to hold on to their humanity and faith. The script meshes interviews with Gabersdorf survivors with passages from the diary, women who knew Fox's mother before the war and in Palestine and the USA after the war and Holocaust scholars, as Fox tries to understand why her mother denied being a survivor and how this chapter fell through the cracks of history.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lbj6DJwyX85o_1jwxdoXrWhAJCy5-Cdre-J0nRr9IIA/edit?usp=sharing
Primary URL Description: This is our latest script of our feature-length documentary that highlights director Marisa Fox's search for her late mother's hidden past, which leads her to excavate a larger, historical backstory of Jewish women's slave labor during the Holocaust. At the heart of the film is a collective diary from women's camp Gabersdorf in Sudetenland, where Fox's mother was imprisoned for nearly 5 years, along with 400 mainly Polish Jewish teenage girls from her home turf, who were worked nearly to death manufacturing textiles for the German military. The diary exposes the sexual trauma these young women experienced, but also their agency, sisterhood and how writing became a form of resistance and a means to hold on to their humanity and faith. The script meshes interviews with Gabersdorf survivors with passages from the diary, women who knew Fox's mother before the war and in Palestine and the USA after the war and Holocaust scholars, as Fox tries to understand why her mother denied being a surv

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