- Documentary Film
The Jews Road
Le Chemin des Juifs
A Survivor's Journey
Le Chemin des Juifs (“The Jews’ Road”) is a 4 km stretch of overgrown concrete road in Northern France. For those who now ramble along this leafy path, winding its way to the sandy beaches of Hardelot, there are only two signs that reveal its origin.
One is a memorial stone and the other more hidden, but altogether more revealing: the footprints in the concrete left behind by Belgian Jews. These are the men who were deported to labour camps in Northern France between 1942-1944, to build the Atlantic Wall.
“In the concrete, they left their footprints.
In the silence, they left everything else.”
David Shentow
David Shentow was just seventeen years old in 1942 when he was taken from his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium, to the Dannes-Camiers labour camp in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region of France. Now ninety-one years old and a Canadian citizen, David is the only living survivor to bear witness to this little-known piece of World War II holocaust history.
David’s story, like so many other survivors, is one of unimaginable pain and loss. Initially, the wrenching away from family and friends, the constant fear, the inhumane treatment, the emotional and physical suffering, the loss of liberty and the temporary state that meant death looked preferable to life. Yet despite all the suffering, there is within us a want to survive and even more than that: to live. As surely, what better revenge for any atrocity than to live and find peace and happiness again.
One man's story
Every person's truth.
This remarkable journey of survival takes us from Dannes-Camiers to Auschwitz, the Warsaw Uprising, the first recorded Death March in Poland, the horrors of the cattle trains, David’s liberation from Dachau and eventual emigration to Canada.Â
Filmed on location in France, Belgium, Canada and the UK, Le Chemin des Juifs is the story of one man portrayed in a manner that speaks to every one of us.
David’s eloquence and vivid recounting of events, accompanied by expert interviews and archive footage, along with powerfully emotive original music by Patrick Savage and performed by some of the UK’s finest musicians, will indelibly touch the heart and mind of every viewer.