Their only "crime" was trying to escape the Nazi tyranny of occupied Europe yet they found themselves imprisoned by the British for nearly five years. The documentary "Atlantic Drift," by Michael Daëron, tells their story.

It wasn't until he was 25 years old that Shlomo Haendel learned that his father's death while imprisoned on the island of Mauritius was suicide. Much of what he knew of his father's journey and imprisonment he had learned from his father's sketches and drawings of that time. With his mother, Shlomo finally returns to the site of his father's suicide in an attempt to understand what led his father to choose death. However, "Atlantic Drift" is more than just the story of the journey of one man. Rather, it is the story of the many who, in their attempt to escape Nazi tyranny, found their way blocked by quotas, red tape, and anti-Semitism.

The so-called White Paper of 1939, outlining British policy on Jewish immigration throughout the war years, severely limited immigration to Palestine. Despite this, in 1940 a group of Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe collected in Bratislava, where they hired four boats to take them to Palestine. Through excerpts from a young girl's diary and other eyewitness accounts by survivors of the ship Atlantic, the documentary recounts conditions on the boat: the overcrowding that causes the ship's violent rocking; the hunger, seasickness, and disease; and the struggle to find fuel once the coal is depleted.

It seems that their perilous journey has ended as they finally arrive in Haifa. Instead, they are forcibly deported by the British to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the East African coast. Here, they find themselves confined in Beau Bassin, the state prison. Unfortunately, at this point the film fails to convey an impression of the life of those imprisoned, who included 621 women and 116 children. As we view the prison with its three stories of cells, we can only imagine what it must have been like.

Above all, "Atlantic Drift" moves the viewer to contemplate the thousands that have sought safety and been denied - be it during the Holocaust or today by individuals fearing tyranny still found throughout the world. As one Atlantic survivor states, "We committed no crime - why are we kept here?" Why indeed?

Jacqueline Littlefield is the Education Outreach Coordinator for the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine. She conducts workshops and professional development training for teachers throughout Maine.

2004 MJFF Program Book edited by Abby Zimet