Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.
I’ve commented before on the glut of films on The List that concern World War II in general and The Holocaust in specific. I’d be hard pressed to claim that I’m tired of these films or this topic, but there does come a time when I wonder how often I’m going to essentially see the same story over and over. I’ve come to appreciate films like Idi i Smotri that offer up a story tangential to The Holocaust without being the exact same story of murder, oppression, and palpable evil. We can get used to anything, I suppose, and so after so many films about the suffering of European Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, there’s a part of me that nods and thinks I’ve seen enough.
So imagine my surprise when Hitlerjunge Salomon (Europa Europa) arrived with an actual new story about the Jewish experience before and during World War II. Based on the real life and experience of Salomon Perel, this is perhaps the most astonishing tale of this time ever told. Salomon (Marco Hofschneider) survives in any way he can through the war as a Jew, and does so in the most astonishing way possible.
