The "package tour" of the title of this excellent documentary is a trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau by a group made up of concentration camp survivors and a younger generation of their relatives. Interspersed with the tour of both death camps and the reactions and comments of the visitors (no narration is added), is an interview with a woman who could not go on the tour because she needed yet another operation to mend the physical damage she suffered in one of these camps. As a part of her story, she tells of a chilling encounter with a neo-Nazi during one of her hospital stays who flatly states that Hitler "should have finished the job." One of the reasons that Package Tour is effective and eye-opening is just this kind of juxtaposition of ignorance and cruelty versus the harsh truth of historical reality and human suffering. |