WHISC - Women in the Holocaust International Study Center, cordially invites you to a special online panel featuring the documentary film The Granddaughter by filmmaker Masza Makarowa.
Thursday, June 25, 2026
20:00 Israel Time
Online via Zoom
THE GRANDDAUGHTER (WNUCZKA NACZELNEJ, 2025, Poland)
Directed by Masza Makarowa
Ewa Heller, now an 86-year-old psychoanalyst from Sweden, survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Her grandmother, Anna Braude-Hellerowa, a Jewish doctor and director of the children’s hospital, refused to leave the ghetto and was killed during the 1943 uprising together with the hospital’s patients. Ewa, her parents, and her other grandmother, Anna Natanblut, survived the war on the so-called Aryan side, hiding, among other places, in Komorów and Wawer. In the spring of 1946, they left for Sweden.
Many years later, Ewa returned to Warsaw in search of an answer to the question: why did her grandmother, Anna Braude-Hellerowa, choose death over life? Why did she not want to join her family and try to save herself? During her search, Ewa met people who remembered both her grandmother and Ewa herself from a time about which she knows so little. The Granddaughter is a story about the past, dramatic choices, and inherited trauma, woven from the accounts of the people the protagonist meets along the way. It is also a moving story about friendship, emigration, and life in a new country.
Co-produced by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum
Ms. Masza Makarowa
Filmmaker of The Granddaughter
Masza Makarowa is a historian, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. She is an educator at the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, a licensed city guide, and the author of A Guide to the Former Warsaw Ghetto (2023). She is currently working on a reportage book about Dr. Anna Braude-Hellerowa, the chief physician of the Bersohn and Bauman Jewish Children’s Hospital in Warsaw. As part of the Un/Filmed International Film School, she is developing her next documentary film. She graduated from the Polish School of Reportage, the School of Historical Documentary Film, the University of Manchester, and the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences — known as Shaninka — which was shut down by decision of the Russian authorities. She has collaborated with the Memorial Association..
Ms. Ewa Heller-Ekblad
Warsaw Ghetto survivor, psychoanalyst, and the central figure featured in the film.
Ewa Heller-Ekblad is a psychoanalyst living in Sweden. She was born in Warsaw in 1940. As a child, she survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust together with her parents and her grandmother Anna Natanblut, hiding on the so-called Aryan side, including in a convent of the Felician Sisters near Warsaw. In 1946, the family emigrated to Sweden, where Ewa later built her life and professional career. Many years later, she returned to Warsaw to search for traces of her family history and to understand the fate of her grandmother, Dr. Anna Braude-Hellerowa, the director of the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Prof. Dr. Lily Zamir
Academic Director and Co-Founder of WHISC.
Welcome and introduction by Prof. Dr. Lily Zamir
Screening of selected excerpts from The Granddaughter
Conversation with Masza Makarowa and Ewa Heller-Ekblad
Audience Questions and Discussion
Women in the Holocaust International Study Center (WHISC)
Bringing forward women's voices, experiences, and perspectives in Holocaust history, memory, and education.
Photo Credits
Dr. Anna Braude-Heller — Courtesy of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
Ewa Heller-Ekblad — Courtesy of Warsaw Ghetto Museum