One Survivor Remembers

 ((Sun. (7), 10-10:39 p.m., HBO))

By JEFF SILVERMAN

Taped by HBO. Executive producers, Stephanie Liss, Sheila Nevins; producer, Kary Antholis.
 
Narrator: Peter Thomas.
 

Simply told through the clear, strong voice of Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann, "One Survivor Remembers" honors a young woman's indomitable spirit a half-century ago in the face of atrocity and horror.

There is a challenge to reviewing Holocaust recollections. The stories themselves are so horrible, so moving and so powerful that attempts to stand in judgment are banal.

Weissmann's is one such story, captured by HBO to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. It's a beautiful story, filled with hope and triumph and an ending that soars beyond imagination.

As a storyteller, Weissmann, a Polish-born Jew now in her early70s, has a remarkable memory for the mundane details that breathe life into events. Filled with compassion and empathy rather than bitterness, she can be hauntingly eloquent.

Her recollections of home and family, the decency shown her by a female guard in a Nazi slave labor camp (how much easier it would have been through the years to surrender to stereotype), the way fantasy and reality changed places and the little mind games that were necessary to keep her from giving up reverberate vividly with pathos and personality.

That said, there is something drab about "Survivor"; something fundamental is missing. With its heavy reliance on Weissmann's face on camera to tell us her story, it feels like radio. The archival images chosen to help illustrate are, with the exception of requisite shots of the dead and the living dead, more generic than compelling.

In the end, there is the overriding sense that we have heard this tale before -- sometimes more dramatically, sometimes not -- from other voices equally deserving of having their stories told and their memories honored.

The danger of marking anniversaries -- and in the past few years there have been a flood of fine and not so fine documentaries keyed to various aspects of WWII -- is that we become, for a short period, overloaded, inundated and inured.

Every survivor of the Holocaust -- indeed, every victim -- deserves recognition. The sad reality is that in media already cluttered by talk, confession, recollection and horror, the truly worthy only blend in with the masses.

Camera, Andrzej Jeziorek, Erich Roland; editor, Lawrence Silk; sound, Ken Hahn, Sync Sound; music and sound design, Richard Fiocca; interviewer , Sandra W. Bradley.