In 1942 nazi leaders met in Wansee to organize the final solution to the Jewish problem. The Warsaw ghetto was first.

Treblinka was created in a rural village near the Polish capital. 900,000 Jews and 500 Gypsies were murdered in 13 months.

On August 2nd, 1943, the prisoners revolted and destroyed the camp. Only a few survived. Less than 10 worldwide remain today. Among them, a painter and former fighter, an 88 year-old businessman who declared against Demjanjuk, and a former carpenter who declared against Adolf Eichmann.

Shot in Uruguay and Israel, "Despite Treblinka" tells the story of Mr. Rajchman, Mr. Willenberg and Mr. Teigman. The movie follows the protagonists' paths in a fairly chronological manner, from the pre-war years, through Treblinka and the uprising, to the recent past and the present, where a series of vignettes, often hilarious, show the possibility of living despite the horror.

The main conflict is exposed within the first three minutes: as camera pans over Mr. Rajchman's building and enters his house -where a group of survivors has gathered to look at an advanced cut of "Despite Treblinka"-, we hear a voice-over from an old recording of Mr. Rajchman's dead wife:

"One winter afternoon we were walking down Brazil Avenue. It was just the two of us back then, we didn't have a home yet. I remember how I would look into the lit windows of houses, buildings. You could tell there were families inside. I wondered, will there be a day when I am inside a house, not out here in the street? I can't quite explain it, that's what I felt. I wasn't sure we would ever be able to have a normal family".

Not yet another attempt to tell the history of the Holocaust in 90 minutes, this is a movie about the handful of human beings that happened to survive Treblinka. It is about who they are -revealing characters whose presence challenge the uncritical assumptions of survivors' stereotypes-, what they went through and how they overcame their past -not always succeeding, not always failing-, one day at a time. We watch them discussing and joking with family and friends, also survivors. We hear protagonists, rather than witnesses

The movie aims to provide not only a more intense and revealing account of the events "Despite Treblinka" but also a truer (deeper, highly subjective) impression of Treblinka and the epic uprising. The movie combines interviews to camera, dialogues between survivors, an impressive collection of archival footage and stills, observational sequences and the music of acclaimed composer John Zorn in his new kleizmer phase, a combination of John Coltrane and the Fiddler on the Roof.

At key moments, we cut to an observational sequence -shot almost two years later- where participants watch an advanced cut of the documentary. The crew registers their reactions -mostly gestures and expressions, occasionally brief comments- to their own story and archival material put on screen, as well as footage and stills of that era.