Now Playing at AFS: SAUL AND RUBY’S HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR BAND

(2020) dir. Tod Lending

Saul, a 94-year-old drummer, and Ruby, a 90-year-old accordion player, have a band. That deceptively basic premise is our point of entry into a lovely, life-affirming documentary that is about so much more—including the discovery of joy in unexpected places.

Both Saul and Ruby are Holocaust survivors; their decision to start a band was based on both the potency of music and the fickle nature of human memory when it comes to mass tragedy. Music is their way of living fully as well as reminding other Jewish people that they deserve that, too. Their many years of existence have brought profound clarity as well as a permanent, lingering sense of loss. Instead of succumbing to overwhelm, which would be understandable, they have fought to be even more present in their community.

In addition to lively musical performances, the film captures Saul and Ruby’s trips back to the sites of concentration camps and city squares where they lost so many loved ones. Their retelling of horrifying atrocities as systemic and matter-of-fact—while they stand in the very places where regimes sought to dehumanize and destroy them—is both admirable and haunting. It’s astounding that they have found so much potential in lives many wanted to deny them.

The staggering inhumanities of the Holocaust—and a campaign by some to tuck it behind decades of denial—make Saul and Ruby’s project incredibly vital. The film still manages to be introspective without shying away from the brutality of past experiences. In addition to an acknowledgment of their history, the film centers a sense of genuine interest in every layer of Saul and Ruby’s present lives. This includes marriages, children, career aspirations, immigration journeys, and the complicated ways in which aging affects us all.

Among an already terrifying cocktail of modern urgencies, anti-Semitism, bigotry, white nationalism, and fascism are things once again surfacing in our global consciousness. For people like Saul and Ruby, these things are far from abstract; they may have never really gone away. This is why they actively infuse their musical performances with repeated calls to denounce the kind of hatred they know to be lethal. This documentary holds space for both the victories of their later years and the ongoing fight they anticipate for future generations.

This Austin Film Society virtual cinema presents this film in partnership with the Austin Jewish Film Festival. It is a labor of love and a reminder of what the human spirit can endure.

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