In May 1940, as bombs begin dropping over Belgium, the Lerner family has two days to escape before the Nazi ground forces invade. Their odyssey takes them crisscrossing through France, south to Spain, on to sanctuary in Portugal, and finally, to America. Overcoming fear and catastrophe—and through remarkable chance meetings and extraordinary luck—this large, well-off Jewish family rescue themselves from a disintegrating Europe, and, in turn, play their part as rescuers.

Rosa Lerner, the film’s eldest narrator, recounts the family’s modest origins in Poland during the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. This close-knit band of ten siblings—three sisters and sevenbrothers—migrate to Belgium, but are forced to scatter during World War One. Resettling in Antwerp, they prosper as diamond merchants and build families of their own. Life is good, until the onset of a second war uproots them yet again.

The Lerners use their means to obtain chauffeured cars, train passage, and even the occasional lodging as they head south amidst the panic and dislocations of the time, but these advantages offer limited gains. Like all Jewish refugees, they had to surmount formidable obstacles and very poor odds in obtaining exit visas and crossing borders. What’s more, some of them had been blacklisted for aiding other refugees who had fled the Third Reich. Still, enduring scrapes with the Vichy police and numerous near-miss situations, they manage to keep one step ahead of bombardments and occupying forces and to engineer an escape route to freedom. Every one of them survives. Three years after they settle in New York, Marcel Lerner joins the U.S. Army and returns to Europe. He fights in the bloodbath of Anzio, and is among the first to liberate Dachau.

Out of Europe, documentary filmmaker Richard Lerner’s inspired tribute to his family and to the tenacity and good fortune of all survivors, is narrated exclusively by the family members who made this journey. Its source materials include 8mm Kodachrome movies from the 1940s that show the Lerners enjoying their lives together not long after they reestablished themselves in America. Music is prominently featured throughout and includes special selections from Chopin, Satie, Mahler, Paganini, and contemporary klezmer.