Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti), the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family, realized her childhood dreams in becoming a doctor. Her upbringing taught her that the duty of a daughter, especially a firstborn, is to bring new life into the world. Rather than being content with just bringing her own children into the world, Gisella became a gynecologist so that she could help bring other babies into the world as well. All of that changed when Dr. Perl was rounded up along with millions of other Jews and spent the war in Auschwitz. By the time the war ended and Gisella was freed, she found herself to be the only remaining member of her family. Her husband, her son, her sister, her parents…all dead.

As she tries to create a new life for herself in the United States, Gisella also wishes to get back to practicing medicine. In order to do this, Dr. Perl must undergo a review and become licensed as a medical practitioner in the US since she has no proof of her schooling, having been wiped out as an “un-person” upon being sent to Auschwitz. The review quickly turns into an investigation as Nazi hunters call Gisella’s conduct while in Auschwitz into question. As the story unfolds, it becomes glaringly obvious that the loss of her family and her treatment while in the camp are not the only scars on her soul from that time.

This is a movie for people who are seeking to understand the Holocaust in all its many horrible manifestations. It is filled with heart-wrenching scenes based on the actual experiences of Dr. Gisella Perl during and after her wartime experiences. The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie go by fairly slow with little happening, mostly following Dr. Perl during her arrival in the US and her initial interactions with her hosts. After that, though, the movie takes off with flashbacks of Perl’s admittance into Auschwitz when she sends her son and a sick friend off to Red Cross trucks, thinking they will be taken to a hospital, and finds her sister in the crowd…heading off in a different line than Gisella herself. These flashbacks go on throughout the film and get ever more disturbing and, often, graphic.

The acting in this movie is absolutely superb, from Lahti’s lead role to the casting for the investigative board and Perl’s various fellow inmates. The investigators included BeauBridges, Richard Crenna, and Bruce Davison, each of whom interacted perfectly with the others to form an interesting spectrum of responses to Dr. Perl, as well as give a disturbing look at how unfairly many people were treated even after having suffered more than most people can even imagine. Nina Young stood out in her role as a particularly sadistic SS guard, and Zoie Palmer also did an excellent job both as an Auschwitz inmate and as a survivor in the United States later in the film. As to their portrayal of Dr. Mengele, it truly demonstrates how people came to trust him and how those who knew him failed to see him as a monster. Jonathan Cake plays the handsome, suave, and debonair doctor who could flippantly send thousands to the gas chambers and passionlessly murder and dissect women and children.

Perl’s investigation chronicles her time in the camps that she spent aborting babies to save their mothers, working in the infirmary, and being forced to help Dr. Mengele with his abominable experiments on twins and their mothers. My significant other, who is a surgical technician and certainly not bothered by the sight of blood, finally had to stop watching this movie. While blood, gore, and violence are fairly commonplace in movies and he can stand watching human misery to a point, he can not stand watching violence against children and babies. After a scene in which a baby is strangled, having been aborted too late, it was definitely time to take a break. Two days later I finished watching the film by myself.

This is far from light viewing and should definitely be kept away from kids. The film strives to remove some of the elements others have used to obscure graphic scenes, choosing instead to show details of shootings and other killing that really hits viewers between the eyes.

Overall, this is a truly gut-wrenching and tear-inducing tale that, through it all, provides a bit of inspiration in its conclusion. Out of the Ashes is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for people who prefer to turn a blind eye to the tragedies of history. For those who understand that the only way to keep history from repeating itself is to learn it and apply its lessons, this movie is an absolute must-see. Be prepared for a film that will stick with you for a long time to come, and that just might need to be broken up into several viewings to take it all in.