Nur der Wald ist geblieben

Shaul Spielmann, a Holocaust survivor, is at the center of this essayistic exploration of memory and of a horror that cannot be fully grasped. *Only the Forest Remains* takes us into a forest in Upper Austria, once part of the makeshift Gunskirchen concentration camp.

The site is a protected historic monument and is simultaneously used for forestry. In the moss lie scraps of fabric, shoes, and tableware—fragments of a camp that is barely marked. And in the ground, presumably, thousands of dead. Activists from the Mauthausen Committee purchase a small plot of land; a survey traces the location of the barracks. Family moments clash with the landscape; the forest appears as a counterpart.

In the final section, the film shifts to Shaul Spielmann’s family in a kibbutz near Gaza. The focus shifts from the Austrian forest to the present. The questions of witnessing, visibility, and dignity remain and become universal.