AUGUST 11 • 2022 | 59
ARTS&LIFE
FILM REVIEW
I
n an effort to survive the Holocaust
at any cost, thousands of Eastern
European Jews passed as Orthodox
Christian to avoid being killed by the
Nazis. Many of those Jews were chil-
dren and teenagers who could easily
blend in with their surroundings or with
Orthodox Christian families willing to
claim them as their own until the war was
over.
The true story of 13-year-old Sara
Góralnik, which comes to life in the 2019
Holocaust film My Name Is Sara, captures
the stark and unthinkable leaps Jewish
youth undertook to protect their true
identities during the heart of the Second
World War. The film, which has a run-
time of just under two hours, premiered
at the Maple Theater on Aug. 5.
Sara (Zuzanna Surowy) is a young
Polish Jew from Korets, a city now in
northwest Ukraine, that was home to
some 4,600 Jews during the interwar peri-
od. Only 500 Jews from Korets survived
the Holocaust. Sara, who married a fellow
survivor from the city and passed away in
2018 at age 88, was one of the lucky ones.
After the war, they immigrated to the
United States, settling in Metro Detroit
and raising three children and four
grandchildren.
From May to September 1942, the
small Polish city was devastated by the
German invasion. The film opens with
Sara and her older brother Moishe on
the run, as they flee the Korets ghetto the
night before the Germans plan to liqui-
date it. Leaving their family and every-
thing they had known behind, they move
with the shadows in the woods. Yet unlike
Sara, who has light hair and eyes, Moishe
has obviously Jewish features.
As her brother sleeps, Sara makes the
most difficult decision of her life. She
leaves Moishe in the forest, knowing
they’d both be at risk with his Jewish
features, and runs deep into the woods
where she survives for several days with
almost no food.
Sara eventually reaches the Ukrainian
countryside, where she finds a farmer
at work and begs for a job. She takes on
the name of her Christian classmate,
Manya Romanchuk, and claims to be
an Orthodox Christian girl who ran
away from her troubled home life.
Sara is taken to a farmer Pavlo (Eryk
Lubos) and his wife Nadya (Michalina
Olszanska), who agree to let Sara work
for them as a nanny in exchange for
food and shelter.
Yet, Sara is tested in ways unimag-
inable for young Jews. She’s asked to
cross herself, eat pork and assist Pavlo
and Nadya’s children with Christian
prayers. While the family begins to
steadily accept Sara as one of their own,
Sara knows she isn’t safe. The Ukrainian
countryside is occupied by Nazis, who
consistently pose a threat to her life.
However, in addition to the Nazi threat
overhead, Sara finds antisemitism all
around her, a feeling deeply ingrained in
the Ukrainian countryside. Few scenes
leave out the suspicion that Sara is con-
stantly encountering, showing just how
dangerous her disguise truly was — at any
second, her cover could be blown and she
would be killed.
As Sara learns the ways of the small
village, she develops complicated rela-
tionships with Pavlo and Nadya. On top
of protecting her own identity, she must
protect the dark secrets of her employers’
marriage in order to keep her job and
stay alive.
My Name Is Sara is a slow burn that
tells the story of the Holocaust like it is,
leaving no stone unturned as how it por-
trayed the devastation of the Nazi occu-
pation and rampant antisemitism that
plagued Eastern Europe. The film is made
in association with the Shoah Foundation
and is executive produced by Sara’s eldest
son, Mickey Shapiro, offering a personal
and poignant edge that only those who
knew Sara best could give.
My Name Is Sara is a
harrowing war tale of
balancing survival with
secrets.
Telling It
Like It Is
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A still from
My Name Is Sara
RATING: HHHHI