The extraordinary story of a Black Holocaust survivor, as told by his daughter

As one of the only Black men known to have been imprisoned at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, the life of José Carlos Grey-Molay has, for decades, been of interest to historians of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The historic archive contains two pictures of the young José Carlos dressed in formal-looking attire at the camp, as well as stories of a Black man from Barcelona – described as ‘not only handsome but also cultivated’ – who confused the prejudices of his Nazi captors, but little else was known about him. In this short film, his daughter Muriel now tells her father’s improbable life story, from his childhood in Spanish Guinea (now Equatorial Guinea), to his years as a freedom fighter in the Spanish civil war and the French resistance, to his time in Mauthausen, to his postwar years as a family man in France, when he rarely spoke of his past. Into her narrative, the Spanish director Enric Ribes weaves recreated home movies, family snapshots and archival records, creating a deeply moving film and meaningful historical document from what is, above all else, a daughter’s love letter to her beloved late father.

Via Short of the Week