This film is a screen adaptation of the memoir of a German Holocaust survivor and, except for the opening and closing scenes is a straightforward narrative, chronicling the family's experiences during the period following their narrow escape from deportation eastward to a concentration camp from which they know there is no return.
The first scene sets up the back story of the end of WWI, when the Jewish horse trader and German farmer serve their country and are awarded the Iron Cross for valor. A narrative voice explains the central irony of military service being rewarded by country that would later persecute or exterminate its heroes.
The farmer's family faces conflicting loyalties -- a son who goes off to war on the Eastern Front at the same time as the parents take in the horse traders wife and daughter, along with various other displaced persons; a daughter in the first blush of romance with a Nazi activist and his cause. The Jewish husband and wife, meanwhile, suffer the separation and perils of an assumed identity (in the case of the wife and daughter) and isolation, hiding, constant vigilance (in the case of the husband).
This film invites the viewer to live through these events with the family, and never over-dramatizes - which may account for the lack of enthusiasm of younger viewers. But the performances have much psychological depth as well as a ring of truth in all its scenes.
The first scene sets up the back story of the end of WWI, when the Jewish horse trader and German farmer serve their country and are awarded the Iron Cross for valor. A narrative voice explains the central irony of military service being rewarded by country that would later persecute or exterminate its heroes.
The farmer's family faces conflicting loyalties -- a son who goes off to war on the Eastern Front at the same time as the parents take in the horse traders wife and daughter, along with various other displaced persons; a daughter in the first blush of romance with a Nazi activist and his cause. The Jewish husband and wife, meanwhile, suffer the separation and perils of an assumed identity (in the case of the wife and daughter) and isolation, hiding, constant vigilance (in the case of the husband).
This film invites the viewer to live through these events with the family, and never over-dramatizes - which may account for the lack of enthusiasm of younger viewers. But the performances have much psychological depth as well as a ring of truth in all its scenes.