The picture was painted by the artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis with supplies she brought with her when she was deported to the Theresiensdadt (Terezin) “model” ghetto in 1942. In the two years she spent in the ghetto before being sent to her death in Auschwitz, she taught the children of the ghetto to draw as a way to survive the terrible conditions they lived in and to keep their minds off the daily transportations to the death camps.

Dicker-Brandeis drew the picture that now serves as the poster for this film for Willi Groag in Terezin, which he miraculously managed to keep along with many of his own drawings. He survived the war, one of only 100 children of the 250,000 that passed through Terezin.

Groag is just one of a dozen survivor artists whom Helstein interviewed. It took her ten years as she traveled the globe to track down the artists who survived the Holocaust and documented their experiences through their drawings and music.

The film, narrated by Maya Angelou, opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmele Town Hall 3 in Beverly Hills and at Town Hall 5 in Encino on October 23. Last year it beat out over 150 other films to win the Best Documentary Award at the Thessaloniki film festival in Greece, as well as the Warsaw International Film Festival of Jewish Motifs. On November 9, the film will be screened at the United Nations in New York as part of the Kristallnacht commemorations.

Helstein says she is extremely proud of the international recognition the film has received beyond the Jewish community. She acknowledges that having Maya Angelou narrate the film has helped it reach a wider audience but winning the Thessaloniki film festival, and the fact that many school groups and even the American Art Therapy Association want to use the film as a teaching aid, are a testament to her impetus to make the film in the first place.

“My goal was never to seek out Jewish survivors or artists or non-Jewish survivors or artists. I just went looking for survivor artists, to make a point about how human beings used their creative expression,” she says. It’s why one of her subjects in the film is Karl Stojka – a gypsy who drew over 1,000 pictures during his time in the camps.

Other artists profiled in the film include Simon Wiesenthal, who, Helstein points out, most people don’t associate with his artwork; Ela Weissberger, one of the few child survivors of Terezin, who is shown performing in documentary footage in the Nazi propaganda musical, Brundibar; Frederick Terna, Judith Goldstein, Samuel Bak, Yehda Bacon, Henry Rosmarin, and Dina Gottliebova –Babbit.

Because of the time it took to complete the film, only Dina Babbit survived to see the film’s release (she passed away in July of this year). Says Helstein, “It’s disappointing that these artists never got too see the film because I knew they would be proud that they had been immortalized, so to speak. But, I feel it’s even more important now to carry on their legacy and now people all over the world have been able to hear and see them and get to know them.”

The thousands of pictures that were drawn and managed to be hidden from the Nazis are extraordinary. Each of these artists risked their lives to document what they witnessed and many other artists were not so lucky. The Nazis discovered their drawings and they were killed.

Simon Wiesenthal’s drawings were ultimately used during the war crimes trials. Says Helstein, “He was on the death block at Auschwitz but was chosen to create architectural drafts and he asked for extra paper in case he made mistakes.” Wiesenthal used those sheets of paper to draw what he saw and hide them in his straw box until he was liberated.

Dina Babbit was forced to paint the gypsies for Joseph Mengele and when she met with Karl Stojka years later after the war, Stojka recognized some of the people from the portraits she drew.

The film is emotional, but never manipulative. Helstein has managed to tell these artists’ stories with compassion and understanding but always maintaining an even hand. Frederick Turner and Judith Goldstein talk about their need to draw and document even though they don’t understand why and they acknowledge the difficulty of going to those dark places and the toll it takes on them.

Helstein, who worked closely with Steven Spielberg for years on the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is no novice when it comes to working with Holocaust survivors. “I didn’t want to make the same films people are used to,” she explains. “I didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh poor survivors, look what happened to them.’ We know what happened to them. We know how they died, what we don’t know is how they survived this terrible ordeal.”

As such, Helstein said she avoided the standard amalgam of disjointed interviews, confrontational photos and Klezmer music. “Those photos we normally see were taken either by the Nazis or the liberators, but the only people who truly knew what went on in those barracks were the people who survived or those who perished. These depictions [in my film] are from those people and I really wanted the film to be in their voices. It’s a very personal story and I wanted the audience to connect with them.”

It’s hard not to connect with each of these artists who not only faced unimaginable horrors but who steadfastly refused to look away and documented everything they saw and heard. And, Helstein says, they were all amazing subjects to interview because they are artists. “I think this was a wonderful way for them to express themselves and to know they have been immortalized. This film is about somebody honoring them and saying, ‘You are important, your story is important and other people can learn from your story.’”

As Seen Through These Eyes opens at the Laemmele Town Hall 3 in Beverly Hills and at Town Hall 5 in Encino on October 23. For more show times and information, visit www.asseenthroughtheseeyes.com