The documentary "Pola's March" follows Holocaust survivor Pola Susswein. From her vibrant life in Israel, she journeys to Poland. There, for the first time, she bravely recounts her war experiences to 200 students on the March of the Living, creating an inspirational and emotional chronicle of remembrance.

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Short Bio - Jonathan Gruber

Jonathan Gruber is the Executive Producer of Black Eye Productions, where he has been directing, producing and writing documentary films and videos for more than 30 years. he has made multiple and award-winning feature documentaries that have been prominently featured at festivals, aired on U.S. public television, and broadcast around the world, including: Centered: Joe Lieberman, Upheaval, Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos, Follow Me, Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, Life is a Banquet: The Rosalind Russel Story, and the Pola's March. He was also the co-creator of the MSNBC series, Story of Cool.
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Interviews with answers:

How and Why did you become a documentary maker?
I went to Syracuse University in Upstate New York and received a degree in Broadcast Journalism. After traveling around the Northwestern United States looking for a reporter position in numerous small towns, I realized that local news, where you have to tell a story in 2-3 minutes and also have to be on-camera, just wasn't the way I wanted to share the things I had to say.

What makes a good documentary?
I call it VICE - Visceral, Immersive, Cinematic And Emotional.

Why did you make Pola's March and what were the key challenges to make the film?
I had the opportunity to chronicle the return of my grandmother to her home country of Poland and capture the highs and lows of her courageous journey 50 years after World War II. At the time, there were no projects made by third generation survivors of the Holocaust, and so what we were creating was a documentary to help illustrate the evolution of memory.

There were several challenges to making the film. The first was exposing the raw memories of my grandmother and her children to the world. Had I been filming another family it would have been done differently - but it was my family, I was very protective of what I was comfortable sharing.

Also, our cameraman fell out of a tree at Treblinka, a concentration camp in Poland. We had to quickly find a replacement and pick up production while the trip was still happening. Amazingly, you can't really tell there were two DPs!

Oh yes - and funding was really hard. Luckily, one of our Producers also was an editor, and we would go into post house at very odd hours to get film completed. Boy, were we tired!

What's next for you? What projects are you currently working on?
I've been working on an epic project titled The Godfather of Sarin, about the infamous German corporation I.G. Farben and the Nazi scientists who discovered and developed the deadly chemical weapon that still haunts humanity today.