Watermarks

The story of the champion women swimmers of a legendary Jewish sports club, Hakoah Vienna. Hakoah ("The Strength" in Hebrew) was founded in 1909 in response to Austrian sports clubs refusing to accept Jewish athletes. Its founders were eager to popularize sport among a community renowned for such great minds as Freud, Mahler and Zweig, but traditionally alien to physical recreation. Hakoah rapidly grew into one of Europe's biggest athletic clubs.

In the 1930s Hakoah's became famous for its women swimmers, champions in their sport who dominated national competitions in Austria. In 1938, the Nazis shut down the club, but the swimmers all managed to flee the country before the war broke out thanks to an escape operation initiated by Hakoah's functionaries. Sixty-five years later, documentarian Yaron Zilberman meets the members of the swimming team in their homes around the world, and arranges for them to have a reunion in their old swimming pool in Vienna.

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