"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" with Asa Butterfield and David Thewlis (2008)

This is a film about the unthinkable. This is also a very intense film; although not at first. It is only after the stage has been set that you realize where this film might be heading; and then, even when you do, there is still a doubt as to what will actually transpire.

An SS officer and his family move into a beautiful home somewhere in the countryside. The home is part of Commandant Ralf’s assignment as the commander of a German facility of some kind. That is al his son knows. There is a Jewish servant in striped pajamas who does all sorts of work about the house. His mistreatment at the hands of young Bruno’s father is the first clue that boy has that something is not quite “normal” about his new home.

Bruno; played by Asa Butterfield; is an intelligent little 8 year old with a precocious 12 year old sister named Gretel; played by Amber Beattie. She is mostly concerned with acting older than her age and is a very insensitive person; not at all like Bruno. Their mother, Elsa; played by Vera Farmiga; is more like Bruno. She is a sensitive and kind woman who doesn’t understand her husband’s hatred and fanaticism.

Bruno discovers a back wall to the house garden and this leads him to the edge of the wooded area surrounding his new home. What he sees when he emerges into a clearing puzzles him. It is a bleak looking collection of wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire fencing. Inside are people who look haggard and worn out. Bruno spots a boy, about his own age, loitering by the fence. He is wearing striped pajamas, just as the servant in his home. His father has told him that these people are not human beings at all, and they are to be despised. Bruno approaches the fence and the boy, who is named Shmuel; played by Jack Scanlon; and the two become sort of friends.

One day Bruno comes home to find Shmuel in his home cleaning the crystal glasses. His fingers are just the right size for the work; which is the only reason he has been selected. Bruno is happy to see him there and offers him some of the food from the table. When his father’s aide comes in and sees this he is enraged. Bruno is too frightened and confused to admit that he gave the food to Shmuel, and the boy is taken away.

Days later Bruno meets him again at the fence and is shocked to see that Shmuel has been beaten. He apologizes for not owning up to his act of kindness, explaining that he was scared. Bruno forgives him and enlists his aid in finding his “missing” father in the camp. In a scene reminiscent of “The Prince and the Pauper” Bruno dons an extra set of pajamas provided by Shmuel and joins him inside the compound to look for the missing man.

As luck would have it the two boys are caught up in a group headed to the “showers”. At the same time as these events are occurring Bruno’s mother notices that he is nowhere to be found. Summoning her husband and his soldiers they look for the boy, only to discover open gate in the backyard wall leading to the compound.

As the search intensifies Bruno’s parents realize the possibility that he has entered the camp; prompting a furious search to discover him before the unthinkable happens. Sparse direction and incredibly underplayed acting make this film one which you will be thinking about long after the final credits have rolled.

The Night of Broken Glass

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950’s and 1960’s was like growing up in the shadow of the Second World War. To know about the Holocaust is one thing, but to live amongst people who were affected by it; either by a friends family members, who were left behind in Europe and never made it through the war, or the many survivors; or refugees as they were known; who bore the blue inked numerical tattoo affixed to their wrists, was quite another. That tattoo identified them as survivors of the death camps, and these persons were revered, as they had looked death squarely in the eye and lived.

Today is the 75^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass”. This photo shows the shock and fear on the faces of the little boy and his mother, prompting me to wonder if they were Jewish. Most likely they were not; as any sane person of Jewish heritage would have been indoors when this photo was taken after the first night of killing and burning had ended. But shock and fear know no ethnic boundaries, and these 2 people may just be reacting to the world having gone mad; seemingly in an instant; although the storm had been gathering since about 1933. Like Katrina in New Orleans, most people hoped the big storm would never arrive, changing everything.

The toll from the Night of Broken Glass was written up in terms of how many buildings destroyed, how many lives lost and the like. But all of those figures can never do justice to what was really lost in that night of Nazi fueled hatred. The 267 synagogues, stores, and homes destroyed that night at the direction of the Nazis, along with the vandalism of 7,500 Jewish businesses, and the killing of almost 100 Jewish people were just the tangible portion of the damage.

The events of November 9-10, 1938, while police and firemen stood by and watched; or turned a blind eye; signaled the selling of the German soul. And the judgment for that would be severe.

Kristallnacht marked the point of the Third Reich in which vulgar political rhetoric became vulgar acts of criminality. These acts would grow into the largest attempt ever made to annihilate any particular group of people. And that is the point of marking this grim anniversary. In our country today, we have so many hate groups, all engaged in violent and inhuman rhetoric. And that’s how it starts. With a bit of talk, leading people to become jaded in the face of veiled racism and prejudice.

And, what happens later, when it all spirals out of control? You wind up walking down a street scarred by once seemingly innocuous words; windows broken and holding your child’s hand in fear for the loss of everything you have ever known. Especially your own self-respect.

"The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz" by Denis Avey (2012)

This is the most unlikely, yet true, true tale of World War Two you will ever read. Denis Avey, a young Englishman, joined the service, as he says, “not out of loyalty to king and country", but a sense of seeing things first hand. Brother, did he ever! After basic training in the Rifle Corps; he had been a crack shot since an early age; he was shipped to North Africa, where he saw some of the most intense fighting of the war. The temperature at Tobruk and El Alamein often topped 138 degrees Fahrenheit.

With water; and fresh provisions; in scarce supply, the going is rough against a numerically superior Italian force, yet they manage to capture tens of thousands of the enemy, and their weaponry. Corporal Avey is wounded, after losing some of his best mates, is embarked on a ship bound for the labor camps in Italy, working for the German war industry, in violation of the Geneva Convention. On the way they are sunk, and Avey finds himself washed ashore and on the run through Greece, and later Italy, where he is recaptured.

There, the prisoners do all that they can to sabotage the work to which they are assigned. Eventually they are shipped by rail to the infamous IG Farben plant which adjoined Auschwitz, outside of Oswiecim, as the town was then known. It is there that the story really picks up speed, boggling the mind in the process. For it is here, in the labor camp adjoining the death camp, in which an idea is born that will bear witness to what went on in that hell on earth. (IG Farben still exists in several different forms today. At the close of the Second World War it was split into different corporations, such as Bayer, Hoescht, BASF, the Agfa-Gevaert Group and Cassella AG., and they are among one of the largest political contributors in world politics today.)

First off, the author notes the difference between the 3 sets of prisoners at Auschwitz. There are the POW's, who are housed separately and subject to the Geneva Convention. Although they are not required to work for the enemy, they are, in violation of the treaty, forced to do so. And that brings the POW's, mostly British and Australian, in close contact with the two other groups; the Russians, who are treated with brutality and beatings, while being slowly starved to death as they work at tasks to which they are wholly unsuited. In addition, the POW's are working in close contact with the Jewish prisoners, whom the author describes as "moving shadows, shapeless and indistinct, as if they could fade away at any moment. I couldn't tell who, or what they were." These were the prisoners who would be shot on a whim, for nothing, save the amusement of the SS.

Avey works alongside of Hans, and later Ernst, two Jewish prisoners, and does the unthinkable. He changes places with Hans for a night by shaving his own head and swapping uniforms. He has studied the shuffled walk wearing the wooden clogs that the Jews are required to wear, and blends in with the returning prisoners, not knowing if he would be randomly selected for an execution that evening; several of which occurred each night. If you moved too slowly; or quickly; you could be clubbed to death on the spot. If not by the Germans themselves, then by the hated "Capo's", or Jewish guards, who for a crust of bread in that dreadful place, traded their last ounce of dignity, in a cowardly bid to survive.

After that adventure, he is still determined to go back again to the Death Camp for one more night, and again swaps places with Hans. This time though, fate takes a hand, and Avey is set forth on the Death March from Auschwitz, when the Germans tried to salvage what slave labor they could. Soon though, the whole plan falls apart as the war winds down. Avey, as well as the German soldiers, are left wandering around Germany looking for either homes that are no longer there, or in his case, Allied troops, so that he can be repatriated to England. Sick, malnourished and wounded, with a blow to his eye; which would eventually cause its removal; Avey finally returns home. It is there that his battles really begin, as he attempts to come to terms with all that he has seen.

This book is also an account of the 70 years it took the author to come to terms with all that he had experienced in the war. For decades after the war he suffered from PTSD, before it had a name. Most doctors dismissed him with some pills and advised him to "get over it." At one point he found himself waking up, in the middle of the night, choking his wife to death as the result of a nightmare. He turned himself into the Police, but they refused to take the charges seriously, and his marriage ended soon after that.

This book marks the first time in which Mr. Avey has finally spoken about his experiences during the war. He seems to be at peace with himself, and his actions. In that sense, it is also a book of healing, and the perspective which only the passage of time can offer.

In 2002, Avey was awarded the Medal of Valor by the Prime Minister at a ceremony which took place at Number 10 Downing Street in London. Fully documented, and written in a wonderfully readable prose, this book may be one of the best written accounts of the Holocaust, as witnessed by someone who lived it on both sides of the wire. A very unusual book, written by a very unusual man, you don't want to miss this one.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" with Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut and Shelley Winters

If you haven't seen this movie in a while, then it is worth re-visiting, as I did last night. In the wake of larger productions such as Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List", as well as some of the more recent film documentaries about the Holocaust in general, which are all magnificent works in their own right, it is refreshing to see a film as simply made as this one. A film that explores the plight of one family, and their guests, in a hidden attic apartment, simply trying to survive. There is no overview of the Nazi Holocaust, it serves merely as the backdrop against which this group of human beings is forced to struggle. Rather than detract from, this approach actaully adds a singularly human element to the film.

It's easy to get lost in the history of the Nazi's, focusing on the atrocities. But sometimes it can be more telling to step back and look at the effect on one family in order to gain a wider understanding of just what it meant to be hunted and persecuted like animals. The horrors of the conentration camps are so cruel and terrible, that viewing them can seem almost abstract, when compared to the more easily imagined discomfort of being shut away from all that you have known. The small, cramped attic apartment can be even more daunting, in some respects, than the open areas of a concentration camp. In the camps, you were already discovered, and rid of that fear. Your fate was sealed. In the attic, there was still hope, but with that hope came the constant, unrelenting fear of discovery. And that way of living can take it's own toll as well.

The tiered construction of the set, comprising the 3 floors of the building in which the Frank family lived, gives the viewer a good idea of just how close the family was to discovery with each passing day. Confined to bed during the daylight hours, with no talking allowed, the only view of the sky through a skylight, wondering if that police siren is coming to you, these were the circumstances under which the family lived and Anne Frank wrote her diary.

Millie Perkins is wonderful as the young Anne Frank, stumbling through her early teenage years hidden away in the attic. Joseph Schildkraut, arguably one of the best actors of all time, is gentle and nuturing as her father. He is the leader of this band of hidden refugees. His words are always measured, his decisions always clearly thought through. He is a responsible and very well liked man.

Shelley Winters is in fine form in this film, playing Petronella Van Daan, the wife of Peter Van Daan, played by Richard Beymer to perfection. They are the couple who have come to stay with the Frank family. She is a woman who is frustrated and angry, someone who wishes that she could just go back and do it over. It is clear that she does not love her husband. He, on the other hand, is a man who feels beaten and betrayed by everything, including his wife.

Ed Wynn is his usual mixture of comedy and pathos, playing the role of Albert Dussell, a non observant Jew who is thrust upon the family in the middle of the film, at a time when the Jews were being snatched off the streets and taken away for the "Final Solution." He is crass and angry, with a feigned allergy to the cat that lives in the attic with the family.

Frances Goodrich wrote the play, as well as the script for the movie, using the Diary of Anne Frank. If you have ever read the book, then you have marveled at how this 14 year old girl was able to capture all of the nuances involved in living in such close quarters, both with the people she loved, as well as perfect strangers. Where did such insights come from?

When the Nazi's do finally come in, it is with all the force and brutality that one expects. And in the end, all that is left is Anne's diary. That little book will stand on it's own merit for eternity. In it are the hopes and dreams of not just one young girl, but of all humanity, calling out collectively for dignity, freedom and justice. Is that too much to ask for?

"Shanghai Diary" by Ursula Bacon

This is, quite simply, the most unusual account of the Holocaust ever penned by one of it's survivors. Though never a victim of the concentration camps, the author's story is yet another chapter in the long list of lives uprooted and forever changed by the war. Only, this story is a bit different. Beginning with the authors luck at having been born into a solidly middle class, secular, German Jewish family, and being able leave Germany just in time, let alone being able to stay together and make a life for themselves in the least expected of places, this story is nothing short of a miracle.

The most striking thing about this memoir is that Ms. Bacon was about the same age as Anne Frank during the war. But that is where any similarities in their lives end. Ms. Bacon, as I have said, was born into a solidly middle class German Jewish family. They were secular in their approach to religion, and like many Jews here in America, they even celebrated Christmas. As Hitler's noose began to tighten, the family made plans to leave. But they waited too long, not believeing that any of Hitler's threats would come to pass. And so, in 1939, after having waited a little too long, they were finally allowed to leave, taking with them only the clothes on their backs. And from this point on, the book takes a remarkable turn.

It has not been widely written about, but there was a thriving Jewish refugee community in China, notably in Shanghai, during the Second World War. They numbered about 20,000 or so, and the story of how they came to be there is as remarkable as the lives they built for themselves while in Shanghai.

The author was an only child. Her father was a printer before all the madness began. Their lives were upper middle class, with the author having a nanny and a tutor. But all that changed when Hitler came to power in 1933, and with the increasingly hostile environment towards even secular Jews rising out of control, the family was forced into exile. They initially left home by rail for Breslau, where they boarded a train for Genoa. From there they caught a German ship to Shanghai, China. This would be their home throughout the war.

Speaking no Chinese, and even less English, her parents were somehow able to tap into the refugee community, where they receive their first "housing." In a disease ridden slum dwelling the family resolves, within days of landing there, that they can, and must, do better if they are to survive.

With the help of a Chinese acquaintance, Vati, the author's father, is able to go into the painting business, where he does quite well, employing several men and always keeping busy. He puts all his money in the bank, where it will be safe. Meantime, his wife, Mutti, begins to sew and hem garments, even taking in work from women who can't finish a sweater after they have begun. Before long she has quite a pile of American money, which she keeps in an old stocking of the author's. She makes enough money that she eventually needs two stockings. Though the family teases her about her mistrust of banks, her decision proves to be a wise one when all the banks in Shanghai fail after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

While all of this adult drama is going on, the author, who is 10 when the book begins, is growing up; and writing it all down in the 4 diaries which were given to her as gifts when the family left Germany. The diaries cover the years 1939- 1947, when the author was between the ages of about 9 and 17. Ms. Bacon, who was already studying English and French while in Europe, speaks English well enough to give lessons to the 3 "sisters" of General Yi, a local warlord who was fighting to retain control of his fiefdom, while at the same time attempting to repel the Japanese. The "sisters" were really concubines, and they taught the author many things that she probably shouldn't have known. And to keep up her education, her parents sent her to the best school available, a Catholic School. I told you this was an unusual book!

The family did have problems though, particularly in the last years of the war, when provisions became increasingly hard to come by. The Japanese were also a constant threat as they waged war in China. For some obscure reason, perhaps dating back to the Sino-Russian War of 1900, the Japanese never really went out of their way to signal out Jews for extermination. Perhaps they were just too busy killing everyone, to signal out any one group. But somehow the family escaped most of the ravages of the war, finally emigrating to the United States in 1947.

This book is a delightful surprise, concerning a usually dismal subject, but it carries a lesson. We make our own circumstances, at least to some extent. We are victims only to the depths to which we allow ourselves to be driven. This family was lucky in many regards, but still, they had to find a way to avoid falling into that despair which often accompanies the loss of home, friends and family, never to return to the place in which you were born. A very unusual book about a very unusual time and place, no picture of the Holocaust can be complete without this unique history.

Kristallnacht

Today marks the occurrence of "Kristallnacht", the German "Night of Broken Glass" in 1938 that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. 14 million people were systematically killed in the Nazi Death Camps, 6 million of whom were Jewish. There is not much that I can say that would even come close to describing the horrors of those times. So, instead I will let the 1980 Nobel Prize Winner, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz speak for me.

This poem was written in Warsaw in 1943, after the ghetto had been destroyed and replaced with "Concentration Camp Warsaw." It describes the feelings of Mr. Milosz, a Polish Christian, who witnessed all of the events in Warsaw; from the formation of the Ghetto, to the subsequent uprising by the Jews, and the final inclusion of Polish Christians as victims of the Nazi horrors, within the grounds of the former Ghetto. In looking to distinguish the "ashes of each man", he alludes to an unearthly power that can distinguish those of the victims from the ashes of the rubble. But he concludes that no power can mark the difference of the Jewish ashes from the Polish ones. It is a remarkable poem, one which could only have been written by someone who was a witness to such inhumanity. May they all Rest in Peace.

"A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto" by Czeslaw Milosz

Bees build around red liver,
Ants build around black bone.
It has begun: the tearing, the trampling on silks,
It has begun: the breaking of glass, wood, copper, nickel, silver, foam
Of gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves, balls, crystals.
Poof! Phosphorescent fire from yellow walls
Engulfs animal and human hair.

Bees build around the honeycomb of lungs,
Ants build around white bone. Torn is paper, rubber, linen, leather, flax,
Fiber, fabrics, cellulose, snakeskin, wire.
The roof and the wall collapse in flame and heat seizes the foundations.
Now there is only the earth, sandy, trodden down,
With one leafless tree.

Slowly, boring a tunnel, a guardian mole makes his way,
With a small red lamp fastened to his forehead.
He touches buried bodies, counts them, pushes on,
He distinguishes human ashes by their luminous vapor,
The ashes of each man by a different part of the spectrum.
Bees build around a red trace.
Ants build around the place left by my body.

I am afraid, so afraid of the guardian mole.
He has swollen eyelids, like a Patriarch
Who has sat much in the light of candles
Reading the great book of the species.

What will I tell him, I, a Jew of the New Testament,
Waiting two thousand years for the second coming of Jesus?
My broken body will deliver me to his sight
And he will count me among the helpers of death:
The uncircumcised.

"The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler" with Anna Paquin and Marcia Gay Harden

Not since "Schindler's List" has a film dealt with the Holocaust, in particular the Warsaw Ghetto, in such a moving and realistic manner.

This story is true, taken from the book "The Mother of the Holocaust Children" by Anna Mieszkowska. It is the stuff of fiction, only this is real. A social worker in Warsaw, outside of the Ghetto, working under the noses of the Nazi's, smuggled out 2,500 Jewish children before the final destruction of the Ghetto.

Utilizing various means, including wheelbarrows, Ms. Sendler is able to place these children with Christian families, who will raise them until the end of "the madness." As an employee of the Warsaw Social Services, Ms. Sendler had unlimited access to the Ghetto in Warsaw. When rations in the Ghetto are slashed to 300 calories per day, per person, she recruits all of her fellow co-workers into a scheme to smuggle food into the Ghetto. When she decides to rescue the daughter of a friend, an idea is born.

Eventually suspected and then arrested, she is subjected to brutality and torture in an effort to locate the children she has smuggled out. These names have been carefully recorded along with the names of the families who took the children in. This information is kept in a Mason jar and hidden. The penalty for all parties to this crime is execution. No trial, just execution.

When Ms. Sendler is about to be executed, along with her co-workers, she is spared at the last minute and sent off on her own to hide. One of the men involved in the plot to save the children has her taken away from Warsaw and hidden. Before she goes into hiding she passes the jar along so that the children can be returned to their families.

The most moving part of the film comes at the end when Ms. Sendler, who passed away in 2007, is shown on camera commenting on the importance of returning these children to their families. She delivers, in Polish, the most beautiful statement about the pain of both sets of mothers. The birth mothers who were seperated from their chidren, some forever, as well as the Christian Mothers who raised these children for almost 5 years and then had to return them to their rightful families, both suffered enormously. And both groups displayed extraordinary courage.

A powerfully written and directed film, this story, much like "Schindler's List", is the story of human beings at their best, even in the midst of the worst. A stunning film.

Davidson Community School's Holocaust Memorial

I never know what I am going to do when I wake up each day. Aside from emergency situations that pop up here and there, I am largely at my leisure. When I read this mornings paper I saw that the Community School of Davidson was having a Holocaust Memorial Exhibit for the next few days. It sounded intriguing so I figured I’d check it out.

To begin with, I was kind of surprised that the Community School of Davidson would be having this event. No real reason for my surprise, I just thought of them as an elite school and accordingly, and incorrectly as it turns out, to place no real emphasis on social issues. I love it when I’m wrong. Leason learned.

These kids spent two weeks, or more, preparing the exhibit. Upon first entering you are given a guide, in my case it was Lauren Best, a 6th grade student at the school. She was animated and well informed in her presentation. The diagram shows the route and nature of the exhibits. The journey begins with Propaganda and moves onto Kristalnacht, the November 1938 “Night of Glass”, considered by many to be the beginning of the Holocaust.

From there the exhibit moves on to the Warsaw Ghetto, where in October of 1940 the Jews of Warsaw were restricted to a small area of the city and basically allowed to starve. The exhibit was done by creating a small alcove into a replica of a typical ghetto apartment. Remember, these kids were working with construction paper and magic markers, and yet the effect was claustrophobic. It was very effective work.

The Railcar was a particularly useful tool for realizing the cramped conditions and sheer inhumanity of the deportations. First there is a square foot marked off in the hall outside the exhibit into which you are asked to stand with 5 other people. That’s what the Jews experienced on their way to the concentration camps. It was unnerving for 5 minutes, think of the reality of it for an average of 2 days, without food or water. No sanitary facilities; stripped of all belongings except for the clothes on your back.

The Auschwitz Camp and Anne Franks’ hidden apartment were also displayed with great effect. The use of photographs and even laptops added to the availability of the presentations. The lighting was subdued and managed to add an appropriately tangible darkness to the subject.

There was a small exhibit about Oskar Schindler and Rabbi Gerber’s Red Shoes, as well as a section of children’s art depicting replica’s of the art work done by the children interred at the Terezin Concentration Camp.

This exhibit was important in many ways, but chiefly it was comforting to know that the Holocaust will not be forgotten, it cannot be ignored. And these kids prove it. My thanks to Davidson Community School for their efforts on behalf of tolerance. And thanks to Lauren Best for her time and a very insightful tour.