NEW YORK / MIAMI — What is the cost of silence, and who ultimately pays it? That question lies at the heart of My Underground Mother, a documentary by veteran journalist and magazine editor Marisa Fox that examines a hidden family history rooted in the Holocaust.
The film, Fox’s directorial debut, had its world premiere in August 2025 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Fox will return to the Bay Area for a screening at the East Bay Jewish Film Festival on Sunday, March 8, which coincides with International Women’s Day.
The film’s New York premiere took place on January 19 and 20 at the New York Jewish Film Festival. In addition, the documentary is available for online streaming exclusively in Florida, tied to its presentation through the Miami Jewish Film Festival. There are no theatrical screenings scheduled for January 27, and streaming access is geographically limited to Florida viewers only.
My Underground Mother unfolds as a first-person investigation into Fox’s late mother’s concealed past. For most of her life, Fox knew her mother as Tamar, a red-haired freedom fighter in British-mandate Palestine. What she did not know was that her mother had also been Hela, a Polish-born survivor of a Jewish women’s forced labor camp in Nazi-occupied Sudetenland.
According to the film’s synopsis, Fox begins her search two decades after her mother’s death. The investigation is sparked by the discovery of her mother’s writing in a secret journal authored collectively by teenage prisoners in the camp. The journal, long hidden, reveals a largely untold story of sexual violence, trauma, and agency experienced by Jewish girls who were forced into labor and exploitation during the Holocaust.
Fox tracks down the camp’s remaining survivors across multiple countries. Many of them speak publicly for the first time, breaking decades of silence about their experiences. Their testimonies form the emotional and historical core of the film.
“These women were teenagers when they were imprisoned,” Fox said in describing the project. “They were victims of horrific abuse, but they were also resistors who supported one another and asserted agency under unimaginable circumstances.”
The film presents these stories through a combination of filmed interviews, written testimony, archival material, and original animation. Organizers say the approach allows the survivors’ voices to be preserved with sensitivity while confronting difficult truths about sexual trauma during the Holocaust.
Fox’s personal journey runs alongside the historical narrative. As she uncovers the reasons her mother rejected the label of “Holocaust victim,” Fox confronts the postwar shame that, according to the film, drove many survivors to reinvent themselves and bury painful memories.
The documentary is written, directed, and produced by Fox. Additional producers include Academy Award winner Deborah Shaffer, known for Witness to War, and Kelly Sheehan, producer of Four Seasons Lodge. Executive producers include Academy Award winner Deborah Oppenheimer, whose work includes Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, veteran producer Nancy Spielberg, and Primetime Emmy Award winner Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar and museum executive best known for One Survivor Remembers.
The production team also includes Emmy Award–winning cinematographer Slawomir Grunberg, composer Wendy Blackstone, Peabody Award winner Rachel Reichman, American Cinema Editors member Keith Reamer, filmmaker Halil Efrat, and animation artist Molly Schwartz.
The film was produced with support from a wide range of public and private institutions. These include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, Jewish Story Partners, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre. Additional support came from the Jewish Film Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and private foundations.
Fox brings decades of journalistic experience to the project. She has worked across print, broadcast, and digital media, including for WNET, VH1, and FX. Her reporting has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, The Daily Beast, Haaretz, The Forward, Ms., and Elle. Her work has frequently focused on gender, genocide, sexual trauma, and extremism.
Organizers say My Underground Mother speaks directly to contemporary audiences confronting renewed global antisemitism and debates over Holocaust memory.
By placing women’s experiences at the center of Holocaust history, the film challenges long-standing gaps in public understanding. It also raises broader questions about intergenerational trauma, historical denial, and the consequences of silence.
Details about the film can be found at the project’s official website.
Fox said she hopes the documentary will encourage audiences to listen to survivor voices that were ignored for decades and to confront difficult truths that history too often leaves unspoken.
Be aware of my book ‘women’s Experiences in the Holocaust ‘ about 70 plus women’s different stories
I myself was a baby in the Budapest Ghetto with my mother. I was 6 months old when we were liberated.