A new movie about fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg explores legacy of her mother's Holocaust experience

(JTA) — Diane von Furstenberg’s design business was stagnating in the 1980s when she got a call that her mother had had a nervous breakdown in Europe. The breakdown, her mother’s companion said, may have been triggered by hearing German men speaking loudly. Her mother was cowering under a hotel concierge’s desk.

Von Furstenberg, newly divorced and worrying about the future of her dress label, immediately headed to Europe with her children. She knew that her mother had survived the Holocaust, but on that trip she learned awful details about Lilli’s experience in Auschwitz. Arriving home in New...