The Last Days is made up mostly of interviews with Hungarian Holocaust survivors whose chief proof that life is beautiful is what they have made of their post-war years. His two daughters pledged to make up for relatives lost to the Holocaust, producing 17 children between them. But the stories of the others are just as fascinating. Alice Lok Cahana is an artist who survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, but lost her sister shortly after the liberation of the latter. Renee Firestone is a teacher whose memories of the period are particularly vivid.
Luck appears to have played an important role in all of their lives.
Even though we know they survived, their tales of escapes and unexpected breaks are often genuinely suspenseful. This is due partly to director James Moll's intelligent selection of the interviewees, and partly to the nature of the stories they're telling. These five are natural camera subjects and storytellers, and their testimony is supplemented by other witnesses. Inevitably, The Last Days has its moments of pain. But the sense of dignity these people convey, their resilience in the face of evil, their implicit acceptance of this traumatic and transforming experience, is truly inspirational.