Four years ago, following the release of my first book, Letters to Breslau, I met Daniela Völker, a film director. She was fascinated by some of the issues, and felt that it was an important story to tell, to reach a wider audience.

For the next year or so, she and I worked together on developing the story. The story grew into the film that it has become, never imagining that Warner Bros. were going to purchase it, or that it was going to become such a big deal.

The film portrays two families, one mother and one daughter; myself, Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, and my mother Anita Lasker-Wallfisch; and Hans Jurgen Höss, (the son of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss), and his son, Kai Höss.

I accompanied them to Auschwitz. Hans Jurgen Höss had never returned to the family home since he had left as a young boy, where he had, in fact, the happiest years of his life. Meanwhile, my mother was on the other side of the wall, in the death camp. Together I supported father and son in confronting that which was unbearable for them to face.

I prepared them for the visit to London to meet my mother, which created an historic moment, perhaps a moment of reconciliation; this is the best we can hope for. October 7th has yet again changed the world, or rather awoken a world that had never gone away, in which hate and misunderstanding, Anti-semitism and Islamophobia, have all gone mad in a way that we have never seen since the Holocaust. We live in dangerous times and this is heartbreaking. The film appears to reach a wider audience because of Octo 7th. It‘s as if the awakening of this cancer has grabbed the attention of the world on a global scale. I hope it‘s worthwhile.