SHORT FILM

Lisa Nussbaum Derman and the Choice to Help

This twelve-minute film draws from the testimony of Lisa Nussbaum Derman, a Holocaust survivor whose life was shaped by devastating loss, resistance and the choices of people who decided to help.

Born into a Jewish family in Eastern Europe, Lisa experienced the destruction of the world in which she had grown up as Nazi persecution escalated into mass violence, deportation and murder. Her testimony follows that history through the perspective of a young person forced to navigate fear, separation and survival.

Her journey eventually carried her to the Vilna Ghetto and into the partisan resistance. Yet at the center of the film is another question: what happens when an individual chooses to help another person at a moment when doing so carries enormous risk?

Lisa’s testimony preserves not only what was done to her, but the acts of conscience she witnessed—and the lasting consequences of those choices.

ABOUT THE FILM

The Choice to Help.

Lisa Nussbaum Derman’s story moves between persecution, resistance and survival, but its central theme is human responsibility. Her testimony remembers people who chose to act when indifference would have been easier and safer.

The film places those choices within the wider history of the Holocaust, showing that even under conditions designed to strip people of agency, individual decisions could still shape whether another person survived.

Through Lisa’s own words, the film asks viewers to consider not only how people endured extraordinary circumstances, but what responsibility one person can carry toward another.