The Optimist

2026

For more than sixty years, children’s store owner and Holocaust survivor Herbert Heller lived with the weight of the horrors he endured as a 15-year-old imprisoned in Terezin and Auschwitz. As illness forces him to confront the silence he kept—even from his own family—he forms a surprising friendship with Abbey, a teenager navigating her own emotional fractures. Through their growing connection, Herbert is inspired to finally share his truth, opening a path toward empathy, forgiveness, and renewal.