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that he had never before met a living
Sonderkommando. He had based Son of
Saul on 10 years of meticulous research
of survivors' testimonies in books such
as Gideon Greif's We Wept Without
Tears, which includes Gabbai's story.
"But ifs good that we didn't meet
before, or I might not have made this
movie — because I would never have
been able to transmit what Dario had to
go through:' Nemes said. "I just tried to
make people have a feeling of something
that cannot be communicated only with
words:'
Over the next 90 minutes, Gabbai
described how he had been forced onto
cattle cars with his family in his native
Salonika, Greece, and endured an 11-day
ride to Auschwitz, where his parents
and younger brother were immediately
killed.
Rohrig noted that Greek Jews had
been forced to pay for their train tickets
to the camp. And they starved to death,"
Gabbai said.
Did you ever find anybody alive in the
gas chamber? the filmmakers wanted to
know. Gabbai replied that his cousin had
discovered a baby boy who was immedi-
ately shot to death by a Nazi.
Gabbai told of how he and his two
cousins, also Sonderkommandos,
once encountered two relatives des-
tined to die in the gas chamber. The
Sonderkommandos told the doomed
men where to stand inside the chamber
so they would die in two minutes instead
of five. After burning their bodies in
the ovens, the cousins scooped out their
ashes and buried them outside the cre-

matorium while reciting Kaddish.
Gabbai never saw inside a gas cham-
ber as it was operating, but he described
the fiery pits into which Nazis shot
inmates to murder them when the
chambers were at capacity. "If you were
there, you can't ever forget it:' Gabbai
said, describing memories of "the blood
coming out and having to clean it up:'
The filmmakers asked Gabbai whether
he recalled religious Sonderkommandos
celebrating Shabbat, as seen in the film
(he had), and whether he still dreamed
about Auschwitz.
"I try not to:' Gabbai replied. "If you
start doing that then it would be very
tough to continue:'
Gabbai noted that many Jews have
blamed the Sonderkommando for what
they perceive as collaborating with the
Nazis. "That's why we made this film,"
Nemes said. While holding Gabbai's
hand, Rohrig added that the survivor
had completed the mitzvah of staying
alive in order to tell his story.
Gabbai praised the actor for his
performance and affectionately called
Nemes "my director:' The filmmakers
promised to visit Gabbai again when
they return to Los Angeles for the
Golden Globes ceremony in January.
"Dario will never be able to fully
communicate what he went through:'
Nemes said in a separate interview "In
a way, he remains forever the bearer of a
secret, and that's tragic. I made this film
to at least try to transmit, in a visceral
way, this experience. But it's only a faint
attempt" *

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December 31 • 2015

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