A Letter Without Words

Sixty years ago, the Nazis wanted to keep the world from seeing their crimes. They made it illegal to distribute photos in Germany, years before the death camps opened. Thanks to an extraordinary discovery by a young American woman, there is documentation of how the atrocities began. CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Jane Robelot reports.

On a visit to her parents' home 18 years ago, Lisa Lewenz went rummaging in the attic and found some old metal boxes of 16-mm films that would change her life. "I ran the projector, an old 16 mm projector," she says. "There is my father as a 20-year-old or an 18-year-old, and his sisters being young and gorgeous."

The pictures were shot by Lisa's German grandmother, Ella, more than 60 years ago in Berlin. At first they offered revelations only about her family, and some of their surprising friends. "Albert Einstein, I think, was the thing that undid me," she says. "I said, 'well, what is he doing here?' and one of my aunts started off very matter of fact saying, 'I remember when he helped me with my math homework in the back of the car'."

But these family movies also offered an extraordinary window into the early moments of one of the century's greatest horrors. "My grandmother had the incredible shock of shooting signs, for example, anti-Semitic signs that say, 'We will have no Jews,' and 'The end of the Jews' or 'Jews croak'."

There was no text to explain most of these images. They were Ella's Letter Without Words to future generations.

To deliver her grandmother's message, Lisa felt she had to make her own film, a documentary. "From the moment I saw them, I thought, I have to do something with this," she says.

She hired a German lip-reader to interpret the silent. She even retraced her grandmother's steps. "I thought maybe if I stood where my grandmother stood, maybe I'd understand something more about why she filmed," she says.

Then she discovered some of Ella's diaries, so she learned German to give her grandmother a voice. "On Nov. 9, 1938, she says, 'shlus sushglaffen,' she didn't sleep well." Ella didn't sleep well because it was Kristalnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," when thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed by Nazi thugs. Ella left Germany with a small suitcase of film and some pocket change.

"I can't tell you I know for sure why she took the risks that she did by making the films when it was illegal and putting them in her suitcase, but I think it was just that she was so aware of how important they were," Lisa says.

It took 18 years, half of her life, for Lisa to translate, finance, direct, and produce her grandmother's message. She says her grandmother left her no choice. "I wanted to make a film that challenges us all to ask the question, what do we do with this history? How can we also oppose this if it happens again? How can we recognize it?" she says. "So this ivery much about 'not again'."

Lisa Lewenz's documentary, A Letter Without Words, airs tonight on PBS at 10 p.m. ET.

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