Many in Oregon know the stories of Eva Aigner and Leslie Aigner, z”l. Now an effort is underway to bring their story to a much wider audience.

“Plight” is the title of a documentary series being developed by their son, Rob Aigner, and Diane Harris, with a first season, “Love and the Holocaust,” set to focus on Eva and Leslie. The idea stems from a podcast called “Clear Choices” that Rob Aigner created to tell his family’s story and moved on to others who overcame great challenges.

“It ran the gamut from professional athletes to quadriplegics to people who had to flee war-torn countries; anyone who turned something really horrible into something positive,” he said. “About two years ago, my mother and I were introduced to a film producer, Diane Harris. I told her about my parents, all that they’ve done, and then I told her about my podcast concept, and she said, ’There’s something there for a series.’”

While the series will lay the background of the Aigners’ journey by explaining their Holocaust experiences – Eva’s in the Budapest Ghetto and Leslie’s at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other camps – most of the focus will be on their escape from Communism to Portland, starting a family, and making the choice to speak publicly about their experiences in the face of Holocaust denial in the late 1980s.

“They went through the Holocaust, and it would be very easy to hate; to hate in general, hate Germans, or hate whatever,” Rob Aigner explained. “But instead, they chose a different path. They chose a kind of glass-half-full path. That’s inspiring to people, and it still has historical context.”

Eva Aigner still remembers when her husband announced his decision to take that approach.

“The minute our first child was born, he picked up this baby, and he said, ‘I’ve made a decision: From now on, I’m going to focus on love instead of being concerned about the time that I went through. I want to focus on that,’” she recalled.

The project has a look book (a compilation of the visual aesthetics and themes for the work) and a sizzle reel (a short tape that explains the project) ready to go, and Eva and Rob Aigner, along with Eva and Leslie’s daughter, Sue, staged a reading of the script at a sold out theater in Los Angeles last month.

“It was sort of a combination of a play and a table read, where we showed excerpts of the documentary that had been shot, coupled with my mom reading from her diary and then my sister and I, representing my father’s story, we would put on a hat and a scarf of his and then read some highlights or, if you will, low lights of his experience.”

The plan is to film portions of the series in Portland, naturally weaving in elements of the Jewish community the Aigners were and are such beloved parts of. But first, the project needs backing and a production partner to get off the ground.

“We’re just trying to get the word out,” Rob Aigner said. “All it takes is one, right? We might talk to 100 people, but it’s going to be one person that goes, ‘I believe in this,’ or one studio, or one grant.”

Sooner is much preferable to later – especially for Eva Aigner, who is 88 and one of four first-generation survivors remaining that participate in the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education’s Speakers’ Bureau.

“There are so few of us survivors left, that I feel that this has to be done before they are all gone,” she said. “That’s what keeps me going.”

“We want to do this project very badly, but only if the right organization or person wants to get behind it,” Rob Aigner said. “We just need to find the funding so we can really make it into a professional project that we think can have a long term impact on society, specifically for educational purposes.”

Learn more about the project at loveandtheholocaust.com.