Fred Zinnemann's Search (1945-48): Reconstructing the voices of Europe's children

In the years immediately following World War II, American filmmakers contemplating foreign locations encountered massive logistical problems and ideological resistance from studio bosses. Fred Zinnemann was the first major filmmaker to be invited by UNRRA (The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) and the US military to interview child survivors of the Holocaust held in camps in occupied Germany in 1946-47. Together with David and Lazar Wechsler and screenwriter Richard Schweizer, he created The Search, a film that defined the limits of historicizing the Holocaust and "voicing" the past in an international context. This article, based on previously unexamined documents in Zinnemann's archive, reconstructs the production, research, and adaptation of The Search, and reveals the core of Zinnemann's lifelong commitment to documenting the war and its legacy. More than any other Hollywood-European collaboration, The Search represented the complexities of an international film vision in the postwar era.