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While many films have already explored the Holocaust through the perspective of survivors, Peppy Margolis noticed that the viewpoints of their children were often overlooked. But with a group of those children already working under her at Raritan Valley Community College's Institute of Genocide and Holocaust Studies, Margolis had the resources at her disposal to change that.

Margolis teamed with Prof. Harry Hillard of RVCC's film department to produce "Sharing our Legacy -- The Second Generation". The documentary was shown for the first time on the final day of RVCC's three-day Learning Through Experience program April 24, following a speech by former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, and is on schedule to be released to the general public in September.

In the film, 12 individuals who routinely give lectures at RVCC as part of the institute's advisory committee reflect on the challenges they grew up with as members of what is known as the "second generation," children of Holocaust survivors.

"I've noticed over the past five years I have been [at RVCC] that more illness and loss is taking place in the survivor community, and I've been trying to develop a second-generation speakers bureau," Margolis said. "These are the voices of the future."

"We want to show that the Holocaust's impact didn't just stop at survivors," Hillard, who directed the film, said.

Margolis said that everyone interviewed in the documentary, including herself, lives in Hunterdon, Somerset, or Warren counties, with a broad age range from 30s to 60s. Hillard, who directed the film, edited 14 hours of interviews into the 27-minute documentary, which weaves the interviews with photos from the Holocaust and the childhoods of the interviewees, as well as screens of text with information about the experiences of their parents during the Holocaust.

The film opens with Holocaust survivor Margit Feldman speaking about her experiences at the Auschwitz concentration camp, but then shifts entirely to the second generation. Initially, comments from second-generation speakers are flashed one after another in snippets of only a few seconds at a time.

Even when the interviews are slowed down, they are displayed in segments of no more than 30 seconds apiece, with varying camera angles during each one. Hillard explained that because the film is geared at a young audience, primarily high school and college students, creating ample movement on the screen was crucial.

"If someone [who is a Holocaust survivor] is telling a traumatic experience from a concentration camp, it's almost intrusive to cut out," Hillard said. "But when these [second generation] subjects were speaking, I was able to embolden what they were saying through editing."

Dr. Elizabeth Wilen-Berg, a psychologist, is one of the documentary's interviewees but also serves as a de facto narrator, providing commentary on many of the other second-generation accounts. Wilen-Berg describes during the film that for the second generation, the Holocaust stories of their parents were often told in a routine fashion devoid of emotion, almost like a "shopping list of groceries."

Since the stories were told in that manner, Wilen-Berg explains, the second generation conjured up their own mental images of their parents' experiences and asked themselves questions like, "Whose pain I am experiencing, mine or that of my parents?"

Many of the interviewees express that as children, the second generation was considered almost as replacements for their parents' dead relatives, with the responsibility of making up for the losses that took place during the Holocaust.

"We embodied the only goodness in life for [our parents]," Susan Ferbank, executive director of the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum JCC in Bridgewater, says during the film. "It was not possible for me to make my parents' life better, but the trying never stopped."

The second generation also recounts how their parents would give them guilt and act overprotective as a result of their experiences in the Holocaust. In turn, the second generation says they shied away from complaining about trivial matters in an effort to ensure that their parents did not go through any additional suffering in their post-Holocaust lives.

"I was never allowed to be unhappy. After all, I had everything on a silver platter," Ferbank says.

Wilen-Berg says that parents often would ask the rhetorical question of "For this I survived the Holocaust?" when they were frustrated with their children. Regarding overprotection, several interviewees recall how their childhoods differed from that of their friends in that they could not date normally, were discouraged from performing "dangerous" activities like riding a bicycle, and had to inform their parents of their whereabouts at all times.

"Her life was about hiding and surviving," Itayla Friedman said of her mother, former Executive Director of the Jewish Family Service of Somerset, Hunterdon, and Warren Counties Tova Friedman. "It affected how she could be the mother that an American girl would want."

Ultimately, Holocaust survivors acted overprotective of their children because they had lost parents in an unnatural way and it was very difficult for them to understand why their own children would ever want to leave them, Wilen-Berg says.

In another effort to limit his parents' suffering, Brian Cige says he would race to the television set to change the channel whenever a Holocaust program came on.

"It's not like we got a thank-you for it [from our parents], but we could feel the tension ease in the room," Cige said.

The latter portion of the film focuses more on the second generation's legacy, embodied in their desires to keep the memories of the Holocaust alive and help prevent future atrocities through political, religious, and social activism.

"Despite the hardships of the second generation, they still tried to contribute in positive ways through their professions," Wilen-Berg says in her closing comments. "We understand the dangers of standing by silently."

Along those lines, the professions of each interviewee are flashed on screen at the end of the documentary, with fields including teaching, law, the arts, private business, and Jewish community service.

"The second generation had challenges growing up, and they still became quite sensitive to the world and to good causes, as well as the value of family and tradition," Hillard said.

This documentary breaks new ground in its intent to elicit compassion from viewers not only for Holocaust survivors, but also for the second generation due to the different way they grew up as a result of where their parents came from, Hillard said.

Hillard added that he still hopes viewers feel compassion for the survivors themselves, but for a different reason than usual.

"We were going for compassion, not just for what the survivors went through, but compassion for the fact that some of their interactions with their children were not as warm as they wanted them to be," Hillard said.