Europa! Europa!

Europa, Europa Format:     Subtitled

This drama was based on the true story of a young German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Nazis. Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) is the son of a Jewish shoe salesman coming of age in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler. In 1938, a group of Nazis attack Solomon's family home; his sister is killed, and 13-year-old Solomon flees to Poland. Solomon winds up in an orphanage operated by Stalinist forces; when German forces storm Poland, Solomon's fluent German allows him to join the Nazis as a translator, posing as Josef Peters, an ethnic German. In time, "Peters" is made a member of the elite Hitler Youth, but since Solomon is circumcised, he can be easily revealed as a Jew, and he lives in constant fear that his secret will be discovered. Solomon's close calls include an attempted seduction by Robert Kellerman (Andre Wilms), a homosexual officer, and his relationship with Leni (Julie Delpy), a beautiful but violently anti-Semitic woman who wants to bear his child for the glory of the master race. Europa, Europa (shown in Europe as Hitlerjunge Salomon) also features the real Solomon Perel, who appears briefly as himself. Mark Deming

Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) was born in Germany, near Braunschweig, to German-speaking Polish-Jewish parents in 1925. (He shares a birthday--April 20th--with Adolf Hitler.) In the opening scene, the baby Solomon is circumcized--an ironic beginning to a story that will revolve around Solomon's attempts to conceal his lack of a foreskin. Solly grows up to be a handsome, engaging youth who does not look particularly Jewish. On the eve of Solomon's bar mitzvah, his family's home is attacked by a Nazi mob. Solly saves himself by diving from the bathroom window and hiding in an empty barrel. The family then flee to Poland, where they are separated during the German invasion of September 1939.

Solly makes his way into Soviet-occupied Poland and winds up in an orphanage near Grodno, where he undergoes a seemingly painless transformation into a Young Pioneer. Although there are hints of the Stalinist terror, they are eclipsed by the German attack on Russia, during which Solly is picked up by the invaders. By virtue of his impeccable German and his claim to be among Poland's ethnic German minority, the Volksdeutsche, Solly escapes the winnowing out of Communist Party members and Jews being conducted by German troops. Since he also speaks Russian, Solly is immediately adopted by an advance Wehrmacht squad as their translator, under his false name of Josef Peters, or "Jupp."

Solly's inner tension is expressed in the form of wonderfully surreal dreams, where Stalin and Hitler waltz together and a fellow orphan appears as a crucified Christ. In one nightmare he hides in a closet with Hitler, whose pose suggests he, too, is concealing the same secret that Solly does. Holland, a frequent collaborator of Andrzej Wajda (she wrote the screenplays for DANTON, A LOVE IN GERMANY and KORCZAK), also directed BITTER HARVEST and TO KILL A PRIEST. Her screenplay covers much of the range of anti-Semitism in Hitler's Germany, whether the airy intellectual sort or the bloody-minded kind. Also familiar with the love-hate relations between Poles and Russians, Holland has not skirted the harmful effects of the Soviet occupation. The most poignant sequence is a recreation of the Warsaw ghetto familiar to viewers from Nazi newsreels, glimpsed by Solly through a chink in the white-washed window of a tram that passes through this forbidden zone.

EUROPA, EUROPA is a compelling story told with intelligence and wit. Holland's direction, and the acting by the ensemble cast, are superb. The real-life Solomon Perel makes an appearance as himself in the present day.

Europa, Europa: A Memoir of War World II
Solomon Perel  Margot Bettauer Dembo (Translator)

Europa, Europa; A Memoir of War World II

The wrenching memoir of a young man who survived the Holocaust by concealing his Jewish identity and finding unexpected refuge as a member of the Hitler Youth.

USING THE MOVIE

• Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953) was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1924 until he died. Stalin ruled through terror imposed by the Communist Party and its ideology combined with an omnipresent and ruthless secret police. He was a mass murderer on a scale greater than Hitler, but this was not generally known until the Cold War began. See Learning Guide to "The Inner Circle".
  
  
• During the 1930s Stalin and communists the world over were vigorously anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler. All this suddenly changed with the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 in which Russia and Germany agreed not to invade each other and divided Poland between them. The Russians took the eastern half of Poland and the Germans took the western half. In the movie, the scene on the river when the Poles went west toward the Germans and the Jews went east toward the Russians derives from the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. The communists' sudden change of attitude toward Germany and Hitler was one the great flip-flops of history. Of course, the communist position toward Germany flip-flopped again after Hitler invaded Russia. This demonstrated Stalin's personal control over the positions taken by communists world-wide and that those positions were subservient to the national interests of Russia.
  
  
• See Learning Guide to The Great Dictator for a discussion of Hitler (first comment) and a description of the term "Aryan" as misused by the Nazis (last comment).
  
  
• The Komsomal was the Communist Youth organization. It was a privilege to be invited to join. The Hitler Youth was the Nazi youth organization. Both organizations served the functions that the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts fulfill in the United States but also indoctrinated children with Nazi or Communist propaganda and helped to integrate young people into the party apparatus.
  
  
• Since Biblical times Jewish boys have been circumcised shortly after birth. Circumcision is viewed by Jews as a sign of their obedience to God. Circumcision is an operation in which the foreskin over the head of the penis is removed. The opening scene in the movie shows a bris, the Jewish religious ceremony of circumcision, which occurs on the eighth day after the birth of a male child. At the time of World War II usually only Jews were circumcised. This is the background for the scene in the movie when the Armenian man sought to avoid death by pulling down his pants and showing that he was uncircumcised and therefore not Jewish.
  
  During World War II doctors came to believe that circumcision was medically beneficial because dirt and dead skin becomes trapped under the foreskin and causes infection. Because of this many non-Jewish children have been circumcised. Some members of the medical community have recently changed their mind and feel that the foreskin can be adequately cleaned and circumcision is now less frequently used for medical reasons.
  
  
• In the discussion between the Father and Isaac concerning whether Solly and Isaac should be sent East to avoid the Germans they use the term "it is written." This refers to the fact that the Jews have an extensive body of written rules for how a moral man is to live in the world. This has given rise to a reverence for the written word. The term "it is written" means that a great scholar or prophet has written down what the solution should be to this particular problem or that the answer lies in the Bible or some other revered text.
  
  
• Hitler started a program called Lebensborn in which German women were to donate a child to the Fuhrer. The children would be raised in special camps run by the Nazi Party and have no connection with their parents. They were to be the vanguard of the new German Master Race. Leni, the German girl that Solly thought he loved, became pregnant with a baby she had conceived for the Lebensborn program.

1. [Standard Questions Suitable for Any Film].
2. Why did Leni choose the blond blue-eyed friend of "Josef Peters" to father her baby rather than Josef?
3. Why was it important that at the end of the movie Solly and his brother could urinate side by side without hiding?
4. Why did Solly have a dream in which Hitler and Stalin were mixed up and danced together? What was the meaning of this scene?
5. Did Solly really love Leni? Can you explain his feelings for her?
6. What differences, if any, were there in the methods used by the Russians and the Germans to indoctrinate their youth?
   
   
   Character Development
   
   
   Human Rights
7. [Quick Discussion Question:] What is the meaning of the scene in the classroom at the school for young Nazis when Solly is singled out as an example of one of the "Aryan" prototypes?
8. The young religious Polish patriot who hated Solly claimed that the Jews killed Jesus. This is an old anti-semitic slur which was used to justify pogroms and persecution of the Jews in Europe. Why is this claim spurious? [People living today cannot be blamed for actions taken in approximately 30 B.C.; it was the Roman's who killed Jesus at the behest of a few Jews, but not of a substantial part of the Jewish population of the time.]
   
   Surviving
9. What kept Solly going?
10. Why did Solly live in daily fear of discovery?
    
    
    Ethical Emphasis
    (Teachwithmovies.org is associated with Character Counts and uses The Six Pillars of Character to organize ethical principals.)
    
    Discussion Questions Relating to Ethical Issues are designed to maximize the use of this film to teach ethical principles and critical viewing. One concept from The Six Pillars of Character that is raised in this film is Trustworthiness (Be loyal — stand by your family, friends and country)
    
11. Isaac never stopped looking for Solly. Can you share with us some examples of family loyalty?