Displaced Persons

June 28, 2010
A group of Polish Jews rebuilds their lives after the Holocaust in this moving debut. Recently liberated, Pavel Mandl befriends a woman, Fela, and the young teenage boy, Chaim, with whom she is traveling. When the three decide to live together as a temporary, makeshift family, the ties they create last a lifetime. Pavel and Fela marry, have children, and move to New York City where Pavel starts a tailoring business. Chaim also ends up in New York after a brief detour in Palestine where he finds a wife, Sima, who was his student in the DP camps when she was a child. For these "displaced persons" the past continues to creep into their new lives: a man walks into Pavel's shop to buy a new suit, the same man who performed his sister's marriage ceremony after the war: Chaim attends a concert where the soloist is a girl he knew in the DP camps. In her warm portrayal of the postwar highs and lows experienced by Pavel and his family, Schwarz aptly evokes the emotions of those who survived.