Dor de tine

Dor de tine is an untranslatable Rumanian expression: I ache for you, I love you madly… ‘I never knew my father-he was arrested by the Gestapo in Nice in 1944, ten days before I was born. First imprisoned in Drancy, he left on Convoy 73 with 878 other men on 15th May 1944 and died a few days later somewhere in the Baltic countries. Between 1939 and 1940, my father, Isaac Abramovici (Izu) and my mother Sylvia Wisner (Sisi), both Romanian Jews and musicians, exchanged several hundred letters. During this time my father was mobilised in France as a foreign volunteer, whilst my mother remained in Paris. I decided to return to those places they mentioned in their correspondence. The film begins with the declaration of war between Germany and other European countries. Frontiers are beginning to close, but everyone acts as though Hitler’s great offensive was going to spare France. As for Izu, he had only 4 years to live.'(Mireille Abramovici)