In Spite of Darkness: A Spiritual Encounter with Auschwitz

Every November an interfaith retreat is held at the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in Poland, where more than 1 million people, nearly all of them European Jews, were exterminated by the Nazis. Why would someone participate in such a retreat? How could anyone attempt to pray or meditate in a place that silences the heart and chills the soul?

Produced by Loyola Productions Munich, and filmed over a period of seven days, In Spite of Darkness tells the story of five retreatants—among them, a Rabbi, an atheist, and a Catholic priest—and how they come face to face not only with their own vulnerabilities and complicity but with new strength, peace, and glimmers of hope. Viewers watch when descendants of victims meet descendants of perpetrators. Beliefs are undermined, old wounds torn open, but importantly, reconciliation begins. It is no longer they who come to Auschwitz, it is Auschwitz that comes to them. In silence they bear witness to what happened there.