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SOME
JEWS ESCAPE THE HOLOCAUST, OTHERS STAY BEHIND
The
Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) focused on
Italian Jews who thought they would be exempt from the Nazi's "final
solution." The same naïve attitude returns this year
in two recent films, Nowhere in Africa and All
My Loved Ones.
 In Nowhere
in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika),
a German film directed by Caroline Link, a Jewish nuclear
family in Breslau, Germany, wisely exits from the country
in 1938. In view of the fact that immigration opportunities
were closed to Jews in the Northern Hemisphere, Walter
Redlich (played by Merab Ninidze) relocates in British
Kenya. He then asks his wife Jettel (played by Juliane
Köhler) and daughter Regina (played at various
ages by Karoline Eckertz and Lea Kurka), to join him.
Other members of the Redlich family stay in Germany,
and the Redlichs later learn of their fate as victims
of the Holocaust. Although the family is biologically
Jewish, they do not practice Judaism and have always
considered themselves German. Walter is a lawyer, but
the only work available in Kenya is as a manager of
a small farm. In 1940, all persons in Kenya with German
passports are rounded up as enemy aliens. The men are
sent to a detention camp, the women and children to
a posh hotel. Jettel tries to get help from longtime
a Jewish resident in Nairobi, but to no avail. Then
a British officer tells Jettel that a British citizen,
drafted into the army, has left a farm behind with
a need for a manager. Accordingly, the Redlichs go
to a second farm. Next, they enroll Regina in a British
boarding school. One day, an opportunity arises for
Walter to fight in the war. To the chagrin of Jettel,
he leaves, though she enjoys occasional male companionship
with a neighbor, a gentleman named Süsskind (played
by Matthias Habich). When the war ends, Walter returns.
In 1946, he applies for the position of judge in the
newly created German State of Hesse, as the army will
pay transportation costs from Kenya to Frankfurt. After
a display of emotions, Walter's wife and daughter agree
to return. The story, based on the autobiographical
novel by Stefanie Zweig, stresses many themes, but
the most important is the concept of "difference," that
is, the existence of various ethnocultural ancestries
and traditions. Culture shock affects Jettel more than
her husband and daughter, but in time she is transformed
psychologically. One reason is that the native Kenyans
prove to be exemplary hosts, from Owuor (played by
Sidede Onyulo), who is their cook, to the rituals that
Kenyans celebrate. However, the departure of the Redlichs
for Germany means that Owuor no longer has a job, so
in the end he goes on a "safari," with every
expectation that he will die, thus serving as yet another
paradigm in the film--about the cruelty and even Holocaust
of imperialism. MH
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In
1938, twenty-nine-year-old British stockbroker Nicholas
Winton
(played by Rupert Graves) began to organize an effort to
have British families adopt Jewish children in Czechoslovakia
as a part of what was called the kindertransport,
which involved a total of some 10,000 children from Austria
as well as Germany. Not
all the "endangered children" were
hustled out of Czechoslovakia by train to England, but
669 were. All My Loved Ones (Vsichni moji blízcí),
dedicated to Winton, is about one such adoptee, David Silberstein
(played by Brano Holicek), who provides occasional voiceovers
during the film. Most of the movie, however, focuses on
family life of the Jewish community in Prague before David's
departure. Similar to the Redlichs in Nowhere
in Africa, most of the Silbersteins do not
practice Judaism and consider themselves Czech. Unprepared
for the horrors to come, none of the rest of the family
survives the Holocaust. Through newsreels, the film features
the 1938 Munich betrayal of Czechoslovakia, Germany's occupation
of the Sudetenland, and the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia.
Personal tragedies unfold because of the larger political
situation. At the beginning of the film, in the year 1938,
a landlord (played by Jirí Menzel) sells the estate
where the Silbersteins are living to physician Dr. Jakob
Silberstein (played by Josef Abrhám) for peanuts,
yet the family does not get the hint that all Jews should
leave. Jakob's brother Samuel, an accomplished violinist
(played by Jiri Bartoska) wants to marry a non-Jewish woman;
his rabbi brother Leo (played by Krzysztof Kolberger) is
not happy about the prospect of outmarriage but consents,
only to have the Gentile father veto the marriage because
the news tells him that the wife of a Jew almost certainly
would be rounded up by the Nazis and die. Samuel, whose
concerts were canceled by the Nazis, naïvely rejects
the explanation and commits suicide. Jakob arranges to
have his son David go on the kindertransport,
and he also pays a friend $10,000 Czech dollars to arrange
a passport for himself and his wife Irma (played by Libuse
Safránková), but the friend absconds from
the country with the money. Robert (played by Andrzej Deskur),
fiancé of the Silberstein's daughter Hedvika (played
by Tereza Brodská), takes off for Palestine, another
option foolishly rejected by the others, who see the soil
there as a desert. Young David, meanwhile, has a sweetheart,
Sosa (played by Lucia Culkova); the ten-year-olds even
have a mock secret two-person wedding one day. David therefore
counts on escaping to England on the same train with her.
Unfortunately, Sosa is booked on a later train, scheduled
to depart September 1, 1939, but alas that train did not
leave, as Britain declared war on Germany after the invasion
of Poland on that day. The film is directed by Metej Minac,
who is the son of a child who was on the kindertransport and
is based on his mother's recollections. In 1998, when Winton
was ninety-two years old, President Vaclav Havel honored
him with a high award. Videos of a 1998 reunion involving
Winton and some of the surviving children bookend the film,
an event for which Winton, who kept his role a secret for
many years, forgot to bring along a handkerchief; he did
not realize that he would need to dry his eyes. We await
a similar feature film about Operation Babylift, in which
over 2,000 out of an estimated 70,000 Vietnamese young
orphans were flown on several flights to adopting families
in Australia, the United States, and other countries from
April 3, 1975, under a similar pretext. Meanwhile, the
Political Film Society has nominated All My
Loved Ones for best exposé of 2003.
MH
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