GEBIRTIG European Showcase

“Once the world capital of anti-Semitism, Vienna has become the capital of forgetting.” So sings Jewish cabaret artist Danny Demont of his hometown in 1987 during the Waldheim affair.

Halfway around the world in New York City, composer Hermann Gebirtig has forsaken his childhood home and fled his concentration camp past in order to silence his memories of internment at Ebensee. While a Viennese journalist, herself the daughter of an Ebensee survivor, tries to convince Gebirtig to return to Vienna after 40 years give crucial evidence in a war crimes trial, German journalist Konrad Sachs faces the terrible reality of his father’s crimes as a high-ranking SS doctor.

With shocking frankness and disarming humor, GEBIRTIG deftly tells the personal stories of victims, culprits and those who came after, as they try to shoulder the burden of history and come to terms with their never-ending past.