Shahar Rozen's Liebe Perla is a documentary that deals with a search. Factually, what advances the movie's plot is Hannelore Witkofski’s attempt to find Perla Ovitz's film of the time when Ovitz and her family were victimized at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. As little people, Ovitz and her family had been the subjects of Mengele's experimental studies. Yet, Rozen's film also presents another important narrative and thematic level, which concerns testimonial experience. Though not explicit, this level emerges strongly from Witkofski's and Ovitz's main considerations about the outcomes of the search. What role, exactly, does testimony play in Rozen's film? An examination of the film's testimonial “reality” introduces two other important ideas: the inexpressible and the irreproducible. In this sense, the film highlights what can be neither said nor repeated, at least not in common, usual terms.

Near the end of Liebe Perla, Witkofski, in a letter addressed to Ovitz, admits, “We have not found the film. Often, I hoped that if I do find it, as soon as I open the box, it would crumble into dust.” She adds, “You don't need the film to prove what you went through. The film belongs to you and you alone.” This statement is of crucial importance if we consider that the movie's major leitmotif is Witkofski's search for the film. But rather than signifying the end of the search, Witkofski's statement reveals the search's profound aim. We come to understand that the presence and the materiality of the evidence—that is, the existence of the film itself—is not the only thing that matters. The footage, if found, would not necessarily bring a deeper knowledge of, or veracity about, Ovitz's traumatic experience. It is instead the testimonial experience, in all its dimensions, that matters. The likely “irreproducibility” of the reality in the camps— the fact that the experience might not be fully captured on film, even if the footage were found—is central for two reasons: on the one hand, it gives priority to the intimate spaces we associate with oral testimony; and, on the other, it qualifies on an ethical and human level the communicative attempt to come to terms with the meaning of another's experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The absence of the Mengele footage as emblematic of a lack of evidence or “proof” only further prioritizes the importance of testimony as a complex idea.