Atlantic Drift (2002)

• 88%
• 2002
• Documentary
• Michel Daeron

After confidential (and shameful) information was released by British authorities, this amazing story of survival was finally confirmed. A documentary, this film, co-produced by several countries finally became reality. Thousands of refugees of Jewish origin crowded into shelters in Vienna and Bratislava in the hope of embarking in the few boats available to escape, down the Danube and out to Palestine, from the Nazi fury. Amongst these, Ruth, a girl of 17, writes a diary on the journey they are to undertake on the Atlantic. The crossing, even after a hard year of hiding, was to be a hardship: three months in a makeshift vessel with two thousand other fugitives, the victims not only of disease, hunger, and death, but primarily of the British navy and intelligence services. These blow up another ship with Jews, deports and jails the Atlantic's refugees in Palestine, and then deports them to far-off Mauritius Islands for 5 years in jail: until the end of the war. In this documentary, Hannah, an ex-refugee, returns with her 55 year old son to the prison where she was held for five years. Her son has difficulty in understanding why his father was killed and today lies in one of the 124 tombs of Jewish prisoners in a cemetery on the banks of the Indian Ocean.