Surviving Skokie

Holocaust survivors confront hatred and silence in suburban America

Surviving Skokie is an intensely personal documentary that explores the long shadow of the Holocaust through the experience of one family and one community. In the late 1970s, the quiet suburb of Skokie, Illinois became the target of a threatened neo Nazi march. At the time, Holocaust survivors made up nearly ten percent of the town’s population, many of whom had rebuilt their lives in America after escaping Nazi persecution in Europe.

The film is directed and narrated by Eli Adler, a former Skokie resident and the son of Jack Adler, a Polish Holocaust survivor. For decades, Jack and other survivors had kept their traumatic memories hidden, even from their own children. The neo Nazi threat shattered this silence, forcing survivors to confront both their past and a renewed presence of hatred in their adopted home. As community leader and survivor Aaron Elster explains, the events became a catalyst that brought survivors together and compelled them to speak publicly for the first time.

Interwoven with archival footage, interviews, and personal reflection, the documentary follows Eli and his father on a journey to Poland. Together they retrace Jack’s path through ghettos and concentration camps, including visits to Pabianice and Auschwitz, while Eli learns about the family members who perished during the Shoah. The film also examines the disturbing paradox of free speech in America through the figure of neo Nazi leader Frank Collin and the legal defence of his right to demonstrate.

Surviving Skokie ultimately tells the story of a community that refused to remain silent, and of a father and son who confront painful memories in order to preserve them. It is a film about remembrance, moral responsibility, and the necessity of speaking out against hate so that history is neither forgotten nor repeated.