Phantom Pains

Tamar Komem

Israel / 2025 / Documentary / 26’30”I2604100

Phantom Pains
1 Images

SYNOPSIS

My grandmother lost her son in the Holocaust, and with him, her conscience and compassion. Conversations with the women in my family uncover her tragic story and the impact she and her experiences still have on us. ----------------------------------------------------- Before her death, her legs amputated and aggressive cancer ravaging her body, my grandmother suffered from phantom pains. Her lost limbs continued to torment her, long after they were gone. Through painful yet humorous conversations with my mother, aunt, and sister, I try to uncover her story: the story of a charismatic, talented woman who, before the war, was full of promise. But the need to survive, and her eternal longing for her eldest son and her “real family” (as she called them), redirected her talents toward darker realms: crime, vengeance, and obsession. I set out on this journey to get to know her and understand why, even years after her death, she still looms so large in our lives and minds. But instead, I discover us, the women who came after her, and how her personal tragedy shaped not only who she became, but who we are. My grandmother’s life was steeped in drama and tragedy. She was born into a respected, well-off family in Kaunas, cultured, multilingual, musically gifted, and full of promise. Before the war, she married her great love and became pregnant. Her son, Mendel, was born in the ghetto. In the children’s Aktion of March 1943, he was violently torn from her arms. That moment redirected all her potential into survival, revenge, and remembrance. From a cultured woman, she became a wounded animal. She never saw her husband again; his last trace was in Dachau. After the war, she joined an NKVD unit and helped bring Nazis to justice. She later remarried “the last Jew in Kaunas,” my grandfather had two more children. In 1957, while pregnant with my mother, she immigrated to Israel. There, poverty and emotional tension defined her life. She idealized her second son and poured all her longing into him, while neglecting her daughters. When she died, she left everything to him. My mother and aunt were deeply marked by that home, each in her own way. My aunt sees herself as forgiving, positive, and a great admirer of Grandma. My mother is bitter, pessimistic, and full of unresolved resentment. But one thing becomes clear: despite their differences, both inherited her charisma, wit, cynicism, and storytelling gift. In conversations with my older sister, I realize that we, too, are shaped by her legacy, each in different but eerily similar ways. My sister, a painter and photographer, expresses what I see as a kind of historical subconscious through her art. She denies this, accusing me of projecting my private world onto her work. Through intimate conversations, family archives, national and cinematic footage, but also through sharp humor, Lithuanian temperament, and multi-generational female energy, this film explores the lingering echo of a single traumatic event: a child torn from his mother’s arms during the Holocaust. It examines the woman who endured it, but also the women who had to live with her. Despite the anger, pain, and complicated relationships, they all loved her deeply, and remain influenced by her to this day. As I keep pushing and questioning the women in my family, I realize that while my grandmother’s story is fascinating, it’s the resonance of that story within us that becomes the true heart of the film.Her physical pain, her phantom limb, was only a symptom of another kind of amputation: the loss of her son. That single event shattered not just her life but imprinted itself in our very DNA.

GÉNÉRIQUE