My father was the eldest child of a large family from Bratkovitse, a shtetl [Jewish village] in eastern Galicia — part of Poland when the second world war began, now in Ukraine. After the war he spent 20 years trying to find out if anyone else in his family had survived. Eventually he was asked to contact somebody in Israel who, it was believed, was Dad’s brother. My father sent names and nicknames of his parents and siblings, and a telegram came back containing one word: “Correct”.

I remember the incredible emotion surrounding that telegram. Soon after my parents took me and my brother to meet our Uncle Menachem and his family. We knew something special had happened: these people loved us, even though they’d never seen us before. For the first time, I saw my father cry.

At 12 I knew, without really being told, that nearly all his family were murdered in the Holocaust, and that he had been persecuted by the Russian secret service. I directed a short feature film with my brother [Mark] called The Virus of War, which postulated some kind of Nazi revival on a British island. In 1972, it was shown at the Cannes film festival. Aged 13, I was the youngest director to have a film there.

My father was larger than life. He didn’t have money, but I was aware of him mixing in quite high society. He’d come home telling us he’d travelled in the same car as the Beatles — things that didn’t happen to anyone else we knew. Trained as a doctor, my father had gone from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, where he worked treating Indian tribes. By the time he met my English mother, who was at university there, he’d given up medicine and was involved in businesses, one of which was a hotel.

In 1980 my father published his autobiography: Tovarisch [Comrade], I Am Not Dead. The title refers to 1939, when Poland in the west was occupied by Nazis and the east was under Soviet occupation. He fled from the Nazis to the east. But soon Jews and non-Jews were being sent to the gulag. He attempted to escape to Romania but was shot and captured by Soviet police. After that he was sent to work as a doctor in a labour camp, but late in 1940 he escaped once again. And for the next year and 10 months he was on the run — in Moscow, Tashkent and Uzbekistan.

It was very hard for me to read in his book how, in 1943, he was arrested by the Soviets and sentenced to death. Rather than face execution in prison, my father bit through veins in his wrists. He bore the scars for the rest of his life. Almost dead, he recovered in hospital. Incredibly, he managed to escape again, but following another arrest he was sent to a prison camp in Kazakhstan.

Between 1992 and 1995 I made three trips to Moscow, Ukraine and Uzbekistan with my father and a camera to try and recover the evidence of his imprisonments and escapes. In Moscow we looked for his file in the infamous Lubyanka prison — headquarters of the KGB. According to an official, my father’s file was so astonishing that, for security reasons, we could only read half of it.

We travelled to Bratkovitse, where my father had grown up and where many Jewish families were massacred by the Nazis. Some people remembered him. They greeted him warmly — but we were never sure they hadn’t collaborated in the killings. Seeing his house was very hard for my father. In Uzbekistan we went to the secret-service building where my father had been sentenced to death. He made me stay in the street with a lawyer in case they wouldn’t let him out.

With his film-star looks, women had always been key to my father’s survival. In 1940, in Moscow, he’d met Noka Alekseyevna Kapranova, the glamorous editor of a fashion magazine. She sent my father into hiding with her family in Tashkent, where the two later became lovers. Not having seen Noka since his arrest in 1943, my father had no idea what had happened to her. He placed adverts in the papers, and a man called to say she was living on the outskirts of Moscow. My father and I went to visit her, and seeing them together, it was obvious how much they had meant to each other. Noka had spent eight years in Soviet jails and camps, and although she never said as much, her arrest was clearly connected to my father. Despite her suffering, this noble woman bore no grudge.

Before his death in 2004, my father regularly mailed money to Noka, though his letters and cards would often arrive with the money stolen. She is 93 now, disabled, with no family, and home is a shack with no running water. My mother continues to send money.

Only one of every 1,000 prisoners held by the KGB survived. Dad was one and his story is an inspiration. There are still stories that he has never told. But at least I’ve had the opportunity to tell his grandchildren about my father.

Interview by Sue Fox.

Portrait: Richard Davies

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