User Reviews

It sounds impossible for a concentration camp guard to fall in love with one of the prisoners, but Franz Wunsch believed himself to be doing so. Maya Sarfaty's "Ahava zot lo hayta" ("Love It Was Not" in English) feautres interviews with Auschwitz prisoner Helena Citron, after whom Wunsch lusted. Nonetheless, she knew that this was no authentic love.

Maybe Wunsch did in fact view Citron as someone whom he could truly love. It doesn't alter the fact that he was still playing a role in mass slaughter. That needs to get emphasized. This isn't the greatest documentary ever, but I still recommend it.

If you allow yourself to disengage from everything but this story alone, you will find yourself in a place the mind had not gone before. "Love" amidst death and cruelty? It seems at first to be selfish and without conscience but that is far, far from the reality. The suffering as a result of saving some and not others, the suffering as a result of feeling something possibly "good" when there was nothing good to be felt, the suffering well after the liberation of the camps and for the remainder of her life and others lives. But, who, in her same shoes may not have done the same. I stumbled upon this documentary after watching the critically acclaimed and super hyped 2023 film, "The Zone of Interest". While I understand the premise of that film and its intent, it did not move me nearly as this film; nor did it evoke every possible human emotion as this documentary did.

If you are an empath, you will come away from this documentary exhausted; but appreciative for the perspective on human suffering, its forced ironies and the beauty, albeit unfathomable, of the song she chose to sing that initiated a relationship that would save her life.