My Favorite Films, Plague Edition (Part 2): Uplifting Holocaust Films

Europa, Europa (1991)

Written and Directed by Agnieska Holland

The Pianist (2002)          

Written and Directed by Roman Polanski

It can be argued that the Holocaust is the central symbolic event of the twentieth century. When we think of the horrors of that century, we often ignore the significant improvements in life expectancy, health, wealth, and leisure time that were in place by 1999. These were largely brought about by technology and the breakdown of the aristocracy. Yet, we have always sensed that these improvements came with a cost. This was symbolized in the Holocaust, when centuries-old prejudices against “the other” merged with modern industrial technology to create millions of murders. There have been many cinematic treatments of this. Most focus on the drama of individuals caught up in the death camps. But some of the best films do not show a single gassing or death camp train arrival, instead allowing our mind’s eye to fill in the backstory rather than showing it. One is Claude Lanzmann’s superb six-hour documentary Shoah (1985), consisting only of interviews with survivors, camp guards, local witnesses, and somber, panning camera shots of the now-overgrown locales. Two other outstanding examples are these two films by Polish directors that tell the stories of two Jews that did not get imprisoned or killed. One even assimilated and thrived as a chameleon within Nazi Germany. Both are based on real people, and both tell the story of that era better than most of the other more conventionally plotted films like Schindler’s List (1993).

Europa, Europa (originally titled Hitlerjunge Salomon (“Hitler-Youth Solomon“)) is a work of Polish director Agnieska Holland (b. 1948). It is a masterfully balanced work that somehow shows the horror of Poland in 1938-45 while demonstrating the triumph of youthful spirit. Solomon Perel is a teenager who lives with his family in Berlin. He is caught up in the usually teen issues of lust, anxiety, and masculinity. As the Nazi era dismembers his family, he flees with his brother. They are separated, and Solomon begins life as a chameleon, first joining a Soviet school in occupied eastern Poland, then joining Soviet troops, then falling into the hands of German soldiers and convincing them that he was a pure Aryan. He falls in with the German army, is befriended by the captain, and sent to Hitler Youth school back in Germany. There, he stands out as an outstanding young cadet, and even is measured for Aryan qualities by a eugenics-oriented “science” teacher, and found to be exemplary, if not quite the perfect blonde prototype. He, and the other Hitler Youth, are recruited for the desperate last fight against the USSR, survives, and remarkably is reunited with his brother, the last survivors of their murdered family. He migrates to Israel.

This story would seem ridiculous, if it were not true. The real Solomon Perel (b. 1925) was interviewed a couple years ago, and says that he did not survive during the war by acting or faking, but by truly embracing his life as a real Hitler Youth or Soviet Cadet. He did this not just to survive, but because when he was in these activities, he actually wanted to excel as a talented student or cadet. He has lived the rest of his life with shame about his amoral approach to a war that devoured his family and friends , and only in the 1980s began talking about it, eventually leading to a published memoir and this film. What is remarkable about the movie is how Ms. Holland picked the perfect Solomon, a fresh-faced young actor Marco Hofschneider. The tragedy of WWII goes on around him, but we mostly see a teen adapting, fantasizing about guy-things, and trying to live his life. Only rarely does he reflect on his family or on the death of Jews around him. This ability to compartmentalize and deny probably saved his life, and is a side of real people that is not often portrayed. Ms. Holland picks an interesting metaphor to build the character around—Solomon’s penis. Solomon spends much of the movie desperately hiding his circumcised penis from soldiers, teachers, and classmates, even trying to create a fake foreskin using needle and thread (it ends badly, and infected). The penis-character comes back often, as he escapes nude from an early Gestapo raid on his home, falls in love with a fanatically scary young Nazi girl (the young Julie Delply of Before Sunrise) and has his first sex with an older Nazi woman, who comically calls out “Mein Fuhrer” as she climaxes (he later leans out the train window, and screams with post-coital glee). Perhaps the most moving scene occurs when now-Hitler youth Solomon nervously returns to where his family may be imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto. He rides a streetcar through the ghetto with the non-Jewish poles, prevented from seeing the horrors of the ghetto by the whitewashing of the trolly windows. But, in a brilliant scene, he peers through a crack in the whitewash, seeing fleeting glimpses of starvation, stacked bodies, and brutality. This is a beautiful metaphor for Solomon’s partial, shielded view of life.

The naturalistic, innocent performance of Mr. Hofschneider, who is on-screen for every scene, is a masterpiece of teen acting (he was 19-20 at the time of filming, and was a complete neophyte to acting). His performance somehow infuses the whole film with optimism despite the character’s morally questionable judgement. The film’s message comes from his brother, a concentration camp survivor,  after they are reunited. He tells Solomon that in such times, one’s main priority is to live—all the rest can be forgotten. I suspect many soldiers have taken this approach to forget things they did during the war. This history was (and is) not easy for the real Solomon Perel to embrace, but we are convinced of it during the film. Europa, Europa is one of the most inspiring and uplifting films I know.

A similar story occurs in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, but the feeling is much darker and introverted. Here, the famed Polish concert pianist Władysław Szpilman is caught up in the Nazi invasion of Poland. He remains devoted to his art, even in the face of catastrophe, on only grudgingly gives up his piano playing, even as his Jewish family is deported to Treblinka and he is hidden by admirers. This film is about absolute solitude during calamity (see above), so perhaps not the ideal film for most to watch during Covid. Unlike Solomon in Europa, Europa, he makes no effort to be a chameleon—he just hided, watching Warsaw be emptied of Jews, the Warsaw rebellion and its bloody aftermath, and the Soviet invasion. Like Solomon, he is befriended by an admiring Nazi officer—one who hears him play a beat-up piano in the ruins of Warsaw. This shows a version of history not often portrayed—that a person can be a monster and a human at the same time, explaining the behavior of concentration camp leaders who, at the same time, doted over their children. Where Europa, Europa is an extroverted movie, as we live the life of a normal teen trying to let the calamity around him just wash over him like a wave, here we see an introverted creature hiding in the shadows, peering out into the carnage and hoping to survive. The film feels claustrophobic, largely filmed in small confining spaces, as if we too are trapped.

The two movies have very different affects, but both end triumphantly, in The Pianist with Szpilman playing the Chopin "Introduction and Grand Polonaise" with an orchestra after the war. So this introverted movie, spent in the shadows, ends with extroverted, glorious music, while Europa, Europa, spent largely in bright daylight with a resourceful, engaging, and slightly amoral teenager, ends in somber, reflective retreat to Israel. Both brought me to tears. Each director achieves a narrative of the triumph of the individual through catastrophe, without making their protagonists into conventional heroes, as would be done in typical American films (such as Schindler’s List). Both movies should be seen as outstanding, nuanced accomplishments in pacing, tone, and direction—each focuses on only one main character—yet each gives me a sense of life amid the ruins better than any other films I know.