It
is 1941. If the Nazis are coming to a small village somewhere
in Czechoslovakia, should the Jews calmly await their fate?
In Train of Life, a French film ("Train de Vie")
directed by Radu Mihaileanu, the village idiot Shlomo (played
by Lionel Abelanski) has an idea: The townspeople should buy
a train and ride to Israel via the Soviet Union, though under
the pretext that they are on a special train destined for
the concentration camps. The village meets under the leadership
of the town Rabbi (played by Clément Harari), accepts Shlomo's
suggestion, and makes preparations, including outfitting several
German-speaking Jews with German uniforms. Once underway,
the train encounters a few problems. Bona fide German soldiers
stop the train twice, but the fake Nazi out-argues the real
German soldier, and they continue. Communist partisans try
to blow up the train, but the conductor takes unexpected detours
and avoids disaster until the partisans view those wearing
Nazi uniforms participating in the Jewish Sabbath. Gypsies,
pretending to be Nazis, stop the train, then realize the charade,
and board the train, bound for the Soviet Union. Next, the
train reaches the no man's land between the German and Russian
troops. In the final scene the village idiot is in a German
concentration camp, trying to tell us that those on the train
went in various directions, but we know better. The narrow-gauge
rails in the Soviet Union would have stopped the train. The
delightful film that ends on a sour note shows how democratic
the Jewish townspeople were and how they cooperated fully
to get ready for the train trip, though they had different
ideological and religious convictions. As a humorous treatment
of the plight of Jews under the Nazis, the film is on a par
with Jakob the Liar
and much more of a tribute to the Jewish people than Life
Is Beautiful, whose lead actor turned down the
part of Shlomo in Train of Life. Mihaileanu,
who was deported from Communist Romania at the age of 22 but
returned to make the film, was inspired by Schindler's
List to make Train of Life as an antidote
to neo-Nazis who currently deny that the Holocaust ever took
place. Some subliminal aspects of the film dominate our consciousness
after seeing the film. Mordechai, the fake Nazi (played by
Rufus), however, becomes more authoritarian as he plays his
role, suggesting that Germans went along with anti-Semitism
only because the Nazis organized society to reward that kind
of attitude, a widely accepted social psychological theory.
Unlike other films on the Holocaust, Train of Life
points out the immense tragedy of incineration of five million
of these remarkable people; history does not record how many
Beethovens, Einsteins, or Shakespeares we have missed as a
result. With music reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof,
we experience some of the lost joy until the film brings us
back to reality. MH
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