This film recounts the story of the July 16, 1942 round-up of 24,000 non-French Jews who had flooded into Paris in the years preceding the occupation to escape Nazi oppression in their homelands. However, the mass-arrest netted less than half the expected number because of the sympathies and help of Paris' non-Jewish inhabitants who warned and hid their non-French Jewish neighbours.
This film is predictably poignant because it focuses on the children of these captured Jews. Their story is based on evidence recounted by survivors and witnesses to the events, and as is often the case, truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to stories of humanity.
What is unique about this film is how the relationship of Jews and non-Jews and how the sympathies of Parisians to their Nazi occupiers is conveyed. Every shade of humanity is depicted from an anti-semitic neighbourhood baker, and bullying police, to acts of kindness shown by firemen and neighbours, and of course the main character, a nurse who volunteers to care for the interned Jews. Interspersed with this story are snippets of Hitler and Eva at Berchtesgaden with Adolf shown alternatively as a loving 'uncle' to the children of the Nazi elite, or as a madman planning the destruction of the Jewish people.
This is an extremely well written, directed and acted film. The subject matter may not be new, but this story is fresh.
This film is predictably poignant because it focuses on the children of these captured Jews. Their story is based on evidence recounted by survivors and witnesses to the events, and as is often the case, truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to stories of humanity.
What is unique about this film is how the relationship of Jews and non-Jews and how the sympathies of Parisians to their Nazi occupiers is conveyed. Every shade of humanity is depicted from an anti-semitic neighbourhood baker, and bullying police, to acts of kindness shown by firemen and neighbours, and of course the main character, a nurse who volunteers to care for the interned Jews. Interspersed with this story are snippets of Hitler and Eva at Berchtesgaden with Adolf shown alternatively as a loving 'uncle' to the children of the Nazi elite, or as a madman planning the destruction of the Jewish people.
This is an extremely well written, directed and acted film. The subject matter may not be new, but this story is fresh.