Jeanine Thomas had never produced a movie or even considered filmmaking until a chance encounter in a San Rafael coffee shop 12 years ago.
The Marin mother of four was playing poker at Peet’s Coffee when she “overheard this guy say, ‘My grandfather escaped Auschwitz,’” Thomas recalled. In disbelief, she asked the stranger, “What are you talking about? No one escaped Auschwitz. Tell me the story.”
Instead of launching into the survival tale himself, Daniel Cohen told Thomas that his grandfather, Herbert Heller, a Holocaust survivor who had recently sold his nearby furniture and toy store Heller’s for Children, could tell her his story himself…