Kiss The Soldiers

The Mauthausen Liberation

Kiss the Soldiers is a feature-length documentary film that chronicles the fate of freedom for European prisoners and American soldiers whose lives crossed in early May 1945 – when the U. S. Army liberated the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen and its sub camps: Gusen and Ebensee.

Against the backdrop of the last year of World War II, Kiss the Soldiers weaves the personal reflections of liberators of Mauthausen with testimony from cam survivors, rare archival footage, never-before-seen photographs, and the unprecedented deathbed confession of the Mauthausen camp commandant SS Standartenführer Franz Ziereis.

Kiss the Soldiers culminates in a powerful reunion of liberators and survivors at the Mauthausen memorial on May 5, 2003.  They have lived fifty-eight years since the fateful day of liberation, a day whose legacy is a mixture of triumphant joy for life and freedom blended with the agony of sorrow and responsibility for those who never found freedom again.