What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
Being an avid binge watcher of everything from "American Horror Story" to "Planet Earth," this caught my attention. I didn’t want to risk an hour and twenty-three minutes of valuable Netflix time for an hour-plus YouTube documentary, so I started with a shorter, five-minute interview with Francine Christophe from France. I had no idea what to expect in this short interview, but this segment of her life gave me goose bumps and had me watching more interviews with people all over the world.
Francine was born August 18, 1933. Keep in mind, 1933 is the year Hitler took power.
She shows the star that she was forced to wear on her chest as a child, like all Jews. She comments how large it was for an eight-year-old child.
She was sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp and said that children of war were privileged because they were allowed to bring a small bag of small items. Francine’s mother packed two little pieces of chocolate and said, “We’ll keep this for a day when I see you’ve collapsed completely, and really need help. I’ll give you this chocolate and you’ll feel better.”
Francine’s mother was the barracks chief and brought the chocolate to a woman in labor. She told Francine that it might help the woman feel better after giving birth. After the woman gave birth to a feeble child, the camp was soon liberated. Decades later, when Francine had a child of her own, she organized a lecture on the theme, “If the survivors of concentration camps had had counseling in 1945, what would have happened?”
Many people came to the lecture, but one in particular stood out. She came to the podium and asked for Francine, where she took out a piece of chocolate and said, “I am the baby.”
Hello, goose bumps.
Want to see more? Check out the whole HUMAN project: www.human-themovie.org or on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJy4nUo1D4R3hlcP8...
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All photos and videos were taken from "Human the Movie's" YouTube channel.
