Is this trip necessary? | AccessAtlanta

Emotionally bracing

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

In 1909, long before Hitler came to power, the Austrians were already persecuting the Jews, denying them admittance to the nation's sports clubs. In response, Jewish athletes formed their own organization, Hakoah, named for the Hebrew word for "strength." And in many different sports, they eradicated stereotypes of uncoordinated weaklings by emerging victorious over the various gentile clubs.

Kino International Corp.

'Watermarks'

A-

The verdict: Crisp documentary of Austrian Jewish women swimmers, reunited after 60 years.

Director: Yaron Zilberman
Starring: Judith Haspel, Trude Hirschler
Run time: 84 minutes
Release date: March 4, 2005
Rating: R for violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
-- Trailers require Quicktime

Nowhere was this more evident than in women's swimming, in which the young Hakoah women dominated the nation's competitions. By 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, Hakoah was abolished and the close-knit group of women were dispersed around the globe, often fleeing for their lives.

Their story, and their emotional reunion in Vienna, more than 60 years later, is captured in Watermarks, first screened locally at last year's Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. The movie is an affecting documentary that spans the century, from the darkening days just prior to World War II to views of today, and what has and has not changed over that time.

Reportedly, director-writer-producer Yaron Zilberman, in search of a subject for his first film, was circling around the Hakoah men's soccer team when he became enthralled with the female swimmers' stories. And what stories they are.

Most notably, perhaps, there is Judith Haspel, a champion freestyler, chosen to represent Austria in the 1936 Olympics. But Haspel refused to compete in protest against the Third Reich and, until just recently, she was stripped of all her awards and stricken from all record books.

But each of these women is heroic, if simply for escaping to freedom, in some instances enabling their parents' escape as well because of their sports celebrity. Today they are women of achievement, who put their lives on hold to return to the native land for which they have distinctly mixed feelings, from their adopted countries of the United States, Israel and England.

Of course there have been previous documentaries in which Holocaust survivors return to view the death camps, but there is something so transcendent and life-affirming about the women of Watermarks, now in their 80s, donning swimsuits emblazoned with the Hakoah patch, paddling about in the vast indoor pool where they once trained and competed.

Not that all of their visit is pleasant. Former diver Greta Stanton is seen in a remarkable impromptu sequence, arriving by taxi from the airport and engaging in an exchange with the cabbie that suggests the underlying anti-Semitic prejudices are still very much alive. In another bitter encounter, a group evening out at a cabaret is marred by the singing of a song that alludes unapologetically to the Buchenwald camp.

Both are examples of chance events that Zilberman lucks into, records and weaves into his film, understanding that no further commentary was needed. He conducts revealing interviews with the Hakoah women and, in many cases, it is clear that he is delving into memories long locked away.

Still, despite the hardships they endured, these women are the very definition of survivors, still spry and mentally sharp, movingly recalling how they made their marks in Viennese waters. Now showing at Shadowood 16.