Film & Discussion: My Underground Mother

CHICAGO PREMIERE

What’s the price of silence? That’s the driving question in My Underground Mother, a documentary that explores the daring sisterhood and hidden traumas of women during the Holocaust through a daughter’s unraveling of her late mother’s story. Tamar was a fiery redhead who lived on New York’s Upper West Side and boasted of her underground days fighting the British in mandatory Palestine. “I was a hero, never a victim” she said, claiming she fled her native Poland on the cusp of WWII and was “never in the Holocaust.”

Whenever Fox pressed her for details, she’d reply: “No more questions.” Tamar died young, a closed book. Twenty years after her death, Fox discovers Tamar had a hidden identity and launches a 10-year search for answers. The truth emerges through a secret journal from a Jewish women’s camp, revealing a shocking story of Nazi trafficking, sexual violence and agency told by her mother and a band of sisters, whom Fox locates around the world. They break their silence 80 years after liberation as she grapples with the shame her mother buried and frees herself from its shadow

This showing of My Underground Mother will feature a post-film Q+A with the film’s creator, Marisa Fox.

Showing in partnership with the JCC Chicago Jewish Film Festival..

For assistance with tickets please call 847.763.3507.

Film Info

• Director: Marisa Fox
• 2025, USA
• English
• Documentary
• 88 minutes