Jason Sommer’s father, Jay, is nine­ty-eight years old and los­ing his mem­o­ry. More than sev­en­ty years after arriv­ing in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is for­get­ting the sto­ries that defined his life, the life of his fam­i­ly, and the lives of mil­lions of Jews affect­ed by Nazi ter­ror. Observ­ing this loss, Jason vivid­ly recalls the trip to East­ern Europe the two took togeth­er in 2001.

As they trav­el from the town of Jay’s birth in Hun­gary to the labor camp from which he escaped to Auschwitz, from which many in his fam­i­ly did not, the sto­ries Jason’s father has told all his life come alive. So, too, do Jason’s own mem­o­ries of the way a father’s past can com­pli­cate a son’s inner life.

Against the back­drop of the Holo­caust, Shmuel’s Bridge sees his­to­ry through a dou­ble lens: the mem­o­ries of a grow­ing son’s com­plex rela­tion­ship with his father, and the med­i­ta­tions of that son who, now grown, finds him­self car­ing for a man los­ing all con­nec­tion to a past that must not be forgotten.