Writer: Véra Belmont, Michel Kichka and Valérie Zenatti
Director: Véra Belmont
Baby Boomers , Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z. From generation to generation, what happens to parents affects their children. In the fifties and sixties, almost everyone’s parents had been affected by war. It was worse if they were European and infinitely worse if they were European and Jewish. Many children grew up knowing their parents had suffered unspeakable things, and were aware of odd habits – such as always keeping a packed suitcase ready by the door. As Henri Kichka, the father in My Father’s Secrets says, “It’s important to be able to run.”
There were books about the Holocaust – Primo Levi’s If This is a Man came out in 1947 (although as Henri says, “He only spent a year in a camp”), but few survivors were willing to talk about their experience until well into middle age. Nearly eighty years on, not many of them remain. Although there is plenty of documentary evidence, the eye-witnesses are now the children of survivors, telling the story at second hand and combining it with their own.
My Father’s Secrets is an animated film based on Michel Kichka’s graphic autobiographical novel . It’s not so much about the father’s experience as about the way it affected his family.
In 1959, the Kichkas are a ‘normal Belgian family’. Michel “likes chocolate ice cream and hates the smell of boiled cabbage.” He and his brother Charlie get into scrapes of a Just William kind; their mother scoffs at the idea of them stealing carrots when “they despise vegetables.” They happen to be Jewish, a fact signalled by the mother cooking gefilte fish (helpfully – and accurately – explained as “lumpy fish with breadcrumbs”). At school they experience low-level antisemitism. They are welcomed into the group of Others by the only Black student, the son of the ambassador from Congo. He almost certainly has traumatic family history of his own, but this film is aimed at young people, so he cheerily invites the two family-poor boys to his own country where there are “loads of grandparents.”
The boys are troubled by the way the father disappears into his study, which he keeps locked, because, we eventually learn, it contains his memories of Auschwitz, including a book of horribly skilful drawings. He never talks about his past, although they know that he was “in a camp.” Then the Eichmann trial happens, and Henri decides to tell the world his own story.
Perhaps because the film is for a young audience, the original French is dubbed, which certainly makes it easily relatable. The cast includes Jewish A-listers Miriam Margolyes, David Baddiel and Tracey-Ann Obermann, with Nicholas Woodeson as a credible elderly rabbi. Elliot Gould, with a perfect middle European accent, is the voice of Henri, kindly and querulous, and at last painfully honest. He looks like a tidied-up Professor Calculus. Late in life he has found a purpose, and his sons are annoyed to find him rather enjoying the attention he gets, while spending less and less time with his family. “Let him have a little fame,” says their mother. Henri is damaged enough, physically and mentally. His feet are ruined, and there is a poignant scene on a train when he panics about not having the right documentation – when the puzzled young guard is just asking for a ticket. His sufferings are not over. Tragedy is about to shatter his family.
With the audience in mind, writer and director Véra Belmont has toned this incident down from the real-life original. It is nevertheless movingly narrated, the caricature faces , with pale blue lines representing tears, movingly demonstrating grief. The artwork, with its limited range of comic book colours, is astonishingly emotive. The romantic scenes near the end are especially appealing. Kichka learnt to draw from his father. Possibly it’s artistic licence but their signature image seems to be a crowd-pleasing farting bottom.
This film is not for everyone. Adult viewers, especially those of Kichka’s own generation, may find the details boringly familiar – the older sister insisting on her right to “live my life” (by going to London to see The Beatles), the mother outraged because the boys have been “to a goy party. With girls.” For teaching children about the Holocaust itself, it is hard to compete with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. My Father’s Secrets tells another story, of how one survivor lived the rest of his life. It’s also a coming-of-age story, and a gentle study of the relationship between father and son.
My Father’s Secrets is available to rent and buy on digital platforms 27 November.
