This is a test to see if I can embed a gallery on a Landing Page.

“You can’t just close your eyes and pretend that the history goes away,” says Mickey Shapiro the eldest son of two Holocaust survivors who just finished a four-year-long journey to create a film about his mother’s story. “I am stuck with this for life, but I think it makes me more motivated. When you hear a story like that from your parents, you want to make things better.”

Mickey’s decision to confront his family history head on through art is a moving example of the power of intergenerational storytelling and confronting one’s past. His mother, Sara Shapiro (formerly Sara Góralnik), was born on May 10 in 1930 in Korzec, Poland; she was the only daughter, the second eldest of four children and the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.

It was first the Soviets who occupied her small town in 1939. As Sara shared in her testimony, given to USC Shoah Foundation in 2012, life remained relatively normal under Soviet control. She continued to go to school (a Catholic school despite being raised traditionally Jewish) and her family remained in their home. They were impacted by the intimidation and wealth redistribution dictated by the Soviets, but for the most part, life, as it appeared to Sara, was relatively normal. Then, in 1941 when the Nazis arrived, her childhood disappeared and the murder of her family began.