Remember 2016

In a New York City nursing home, Zev Guttman, an 89-year-old Auschwitz survivor living with dementia, wakes with a pressing memory of his wife Ruth, who died just two weeks prior. The ward is filled with other aging residents who carry their own wartime history, but Zev’s focus remains relentlessly personal: Ruth’s absence and the promise he made to honor the dead.

A fellow survivor, Max Rosenbaum, who has also endured the camps, gently reminds Zev of a vow tied to the terrible memories they share. Max explains that their families were murdered by a former Camp Blockführer named Otto Wallisch, a man who allegedly reemerged in the United States under the false identity Rudy Kurlander. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has located four Rudy Kurlanders, yet none can be legally pursued with evidence. Despite this, Max insists that Zev and he are the last two who can still recognize Wallisch, framing their mission as a personal reckoning for the past.

To catalyze Zev’s action, Max persuades him to take up the quest for Wallisch and to follow written instructions left behind for him. Zev, guided by a stark letter that cuts through confusion—reminding him that Ruth is dead—leaves the nursing home by taxi and boards a train to Cleveland, triggering a citywide Silver Alert for his disappearance. The journey is marked by flashes of memory and the steady pull of duty, as Zev keeps faith with the letter’s instructions while Max arranges travel logistics.

In Cleveland, Zev enters a gun shop and purchases a Glock 17, a decision that casts a long shadow over the upcoming encounters. From there, Max directs Zev to a set of four men scattered across the United States and Canada who share the name Rudy Kurlander. Each man represents a different piece of an unnerving puzzle, and Zev confronts them one by one in the search for the one who bears a link to Wallisch.

The first Rudy Kurlander Zev meets is a German World War II veteran living in his own home. The man proves he served in the North African Campaign and was never near Auschwitz, sending Zev back to the road with more questions than answers. The second Rudy Kurlander is found in a Hearst, Ontario nursing home; this Rudy was a prisoner in Auschwitz, and he reveals his past by showing Zev an arm tattoo that marks his time there, a potent reminder of the camp’s reach across generations.

Continuing westward, Zev travels to Boise, Idaho, where he arrives at the home of the third Rudy Kurlander. The man’s son, John, is an Idaho state trooper who believes Zev is a long-lost wartime friend, and invites him in with whiskey and stories. John is a neo-Nazi who has inherited a troubling collection of Nazi memorabilia; his hostility surges when he spots Zev’s tattoo and understands what it means. The confrontation escalates, and Zev shoots John’s German shepherd, Eva—named after Eva Braun—before leaving the home in the night, exhausted but intact.

A stop in Reno, Nevada, places Zev briefly in a hospital after a street fall, where his son—who has tracked his father’s movements via credit card records and taxi rides—arrives to support him. A young girl reads Zev a letter that seems to anchor his trail, and Zev makes his way to South Lake Tahoe, California, where the fourth Rudy Kurlander lives with his family. Zev recognizes him by voice as the Auschwitz Blockführer, a moment that confirms the dangerous thread running through his quest.

That Rudy is pleased to see Zev, welcoming him with warmth that feels almost familiar. The tension heightens when Zev’s son arrives, drawn by the trail of Zev’s card and taxi rides, and Zev threatens the man’s granddaughter, demanding the truth. In response, Rudy confesses that his real name is Kunibert Sturm and that he was in the SS, admitting to killing “many” people. Zev learns the staggering truth: Sturm is Wallisch, and Zev himself is, in fact, another masked survivor who had tattooed numbers with Sturm after the war in an effort to pose as Jewish survivors.

The revelation detonates in a moment of raw memory and confrontation. Zev shoots Sturm and, with the weight of memory bearing down, silently shoots himself, uttering one whispered word that seals the moment: “I remember.” The room darkens with the abrupt end of Zev’s life as his son arrives to witness the aftermath.

Back in New York, the nursing home’s residents watch the news cover the grim murder-suicide, a public reckoning of private guilt. Max’s deception is finally laid bare, as he reveals that he recognized Zev as Wallisch upon Zev’s arrival at the home. He also discloses that Wallisch and Sturm were the two men who killed his own family. The scene closes with a stark image: on Max’s desk, a copy of the letter Zev carried, a photograph of Otto Wallisch, and a handwritten confession by Max—all testaments to the tangled, unending chain of memory, guilt, and retribution that binds those who survived the darkest acts of history.

“I remember.”