‘Lost Transport’ to be screened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The Friday event at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is free

CITYnews halifax \ Meghan Groff

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International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be marked in Halifax with a film screening.

The Atlantic Jewish Council and the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 have partnered up to show Lost Transport.

The museum’s public programs and community engagement manager told CityNews Halifax the movie is based on a true story.

It takes place in the spring of 1945 — the final days of World War II — as thousands of Jewish prisoners are loaded onto German trains to be deported from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“[The Nazis] put about 7,500 people on trains bound for Theresienstadt, which is a bit of a different type of concentration camp,” explained Rebecca MacKenzie-Hopkins.

“Of the three trains sent, one makes it to Theresienstadt, but the camp is liberated a few days later by the Red Army, one is liberated enroute by the American army, and the third one is the subject of this movie.”

MacKenzie-Hopkins said Lost Transport is a fictionalized account of that third train ending up in a small German town occupied by the Red Army.

“The story in the film is about the arrival of this train and what happened, the interplay between the German citizens in the town, the Jewish prisoners from the train and the Red Army who liberates the train in the town,” she explained.

“This film is really excellent in terms of acting and cinematography, and it sheds a bit of a feminist light on this story, with the three central characters being women from these three different groups who learn to work together and become friends.”

Lost Transport will be screened Friday at noon at Pier 21. It’s free and you can register here.

In 2005, the United Nations declared Jan. 27– the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau — as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.