SAVING FELA is a full-length documentary film that connects the lives of five young American GIs killed in battle during the Normandy Campaign in World War II to the life of one young woman, Fela Gutter, an inmate of the Auschwitz and Falkenau concentration camps. It is a journey that takes us across continents, from the white marble gravestones in Normandy, through training grounds and battlefields in France and England, and back to these individuals’ hometowns in various parts of the United States and Krakow, Poland.

But SAVING FELA is not simply an historical narrative. It deals with issues that are contemporary and meaningful and relate to all of us.

* When is a war a moral imperative?

* When are we willing to sacrifice our children for a cause?

* When are we willing to sacrifice for our families? In defense of our homes and country? Or for other human beings we don’t know at all who need help for their own survival?

* What can history teach us about the meaning of war? What can we learn from the past?

SAVING FELA is told from the perspective of the writer/director, Fela Gutter’s son. He examines the lives of these five young warriors of the Second World War, and journeys to meet those who loved them. In connecting to those who still long for them, the film explores the personal impact of war on those who survived and those that did not: those whose parents, siblings and children returned to them and those whose loved ones were left behind. It captures the complex emotional processes of forgiveness and understanding, healing and clinging to scars.

Fela Gutter was born in Krakow, Poland in October of 1919. She was about the same age as these three young men. On different sides of the Atlantic, they grew up in a period of peacetime before the world collapsed into chaos. In spring of 1944, while these men were training for the Normandy invasion, Fela was a slave laborer in a notorious concentration camp called Plaszow, sewing uniforms for the Wehrmacht. As the Russians approached, the camp was liquidated and Fela was sent to Auschwitz death camp. Amazingly, she survived and was sent to the Falkenau camp in Czechoslovakia. There she toiled until May 8, 1945, when units of the 16th Regiment, First Infantry Division of the United States Army liberated the camp.

The actual liberation of Falkenau was chronicled by famed director Samuel Fuller in both original 16mm film footage he shot as a GI and in his book and classic World War II movie, The Big Red One. Sam’s story is interwoven in the film through the voice of his wife Christa.

Fela Gutter died peacefully in her sleep 55 years later at the age of 82. During her life of peace after the war, she raised one child and had two grandchildren.

Private Harold Gene Sellers of the 501st PIR pathfinders was the first American to die on D-Day. He was hit descending into drop zone D near St. Come du Mont. His body was found by his close friend and fellow pathfinder Robert Sechrist. He was still in his parachute hanging from a tree at the crossroads. Gene was just 21.

Lt. Colonel John Hubert Mathews was in command of LCM 26 as it approached the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach on the morning of D-Day. When the ramp went down, he was struck in the head and killed instantly.

2nd Lieutenant Walter Francis Perra was strafing enemy targets in his P-38 on June 15, 1944 when he was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Engines ablaze, he circled to avoid going down on the small village of Les Corvees. He crashed in a nearby field, and was buried by French civilians. Walter was 24.

Captain Elmer Norval Carter was killed in the hedgerows near St. Lo. A German sniper shot him while he was tending to a wounded 29th Infantry Division scout on a small road next to the Bois de Bretel. At the time of his death, on June 17, 1944, Captain Carter was a battalion surgeon in the 115th Regiment.

Private Ken Irwin Hatcher died on the night of July 26, 1944 in a muddy field during an attack launched by the 331st regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division. He was the replacement squad BAR man. He was 27.

These five GIs never knew Fela; they did not even know she existed. They would never make it to the end of the struggle, and see it validated. Yet they were each part of the generation that eventually saved her, and millions of others. As such, the personal stories of these five men are proof of the existence of countless, untold stories of an entire generation of men and women who sacrificed themselves to a war of intrinsic truths. It connects the memories of a generation that survived the darkness of an evil to our own age of uncertainties. The goal of SAVING FELA is to in some small measure, bring some life back to all those who were taken too early.

They were sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, and friends. Nearly all of them were loved. Nearly all of them were important to someone in those days so long ago. Nearly all of them left behind a void in the lives of those they knew. Each and every one of them hoped for a long, full life, but for these dead men there would be no postwar world. They would never see their children grow to adulthood, nor would they bury their grandparents, parents, uncles, or aunts. For them, time stopped on the day they were killed. They are forever young. Year by year, they recede further and further into the anonymity of the past, known only to a dying few. To the generations that have followed them, and will follow them in the future, their graves are a living memorial to the past, to what Americans once did, in a place so far from home. For what, ultimately, did they give their lives? Very simply, they gave their collective future to ensure ours.

- John C. McManus, The Americans at Normandy

SAVING FELA will impact people across all generations. By truly getting to know just these six individuals and those who loved them - six individuals who were among hundreds of thousands who each had a story of their own - perhaps we will have a better understanding not only of what was lost in that important war, but of what is lost in all wars, and when that loss is necessary. But this is not a story of simple answers. Rather, our hope is that it will raise a lot of questions. These questions are urgently needed, as we wade through a century that cannot afford to be as violent as the last one.

© 2007-8 Dog Green Productions