Carry the Torch/A Lasting Legacy

Commandant Göth singled out a man from the line and shot him for no apparent reason at all. Göth then turned to the next person and asked, “Why are you staring at me so stupidly?” And he shot him as well.

The turmoil of war and persecution pulls both Sam and Johnny to the Plaszow forced labour camp in Poland. In 1943, Johnny and Sam, only teenagers, quickly learn of the brutality of the new camp commandant, Amon Göth. By sheer luck, Sam becomes the commandant’s houseboy, a privileged, yet risky, position, and Johnny gets a job in the carpentry workshop, “useful” yet still living in constant fear. The young men both feel like they are walking a tightrope, where one wrong move can make them the target of Göth’s unpredictable volatility. Ultimately deported and on different trajectories, their experiences in Plaszow become an ever-present reminder that their fates can change in an instant. Carry the Torch and A Lasting Legacy are the different yet parallel stories of two men who, as the sole survivors of their immediate families, must find their own way after the war and decide whether to keep their histories in the past.