How I Knew and When is a performance film, a fusion of poetry and film to expand the limits of what is purely cinematic and purely literary. The poem is a kind of life inventory, about my gradual awareness of the Shoah and its impact on my life. My parents tried to protect me from the pain they felt losing almost all of their families, from having their lives uprooted as children, and trying to begin again in a new country. In my teens, I began to ask questions about what happened, and they began to tell me their stories. The film unfolds the stories I came to know from childhood to coming of age to adulthood.