| Saviors in the Night | |
|---|---|
| German | Unter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht |
| Directed by | Ludi Boeken |
| Starring | Veronica Ferres and Armin Rohde |
Release date |
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| Language | German |
Saviors in the Night (Unter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht) is a German-French film directed by Ludi Boeken and starring Veronica Ferres and Armin Rohde. The film is based on a true story and first premiered at the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem. [1] It premiered at German cinemas on 8 October 2009. Ferres plays Marga Spiegel, a Jewish woman, persecuted by the Nazis who eventually survived with the help of farmers in Westphalia. The film is based on her memoirs, published in 1965 as the book Savior in the Night. [2]
Westphalia in 1943: The Jew Siegmund "Menne" Spiegel, a horse dealer, does not want to lead his wife Marga and daughter Karin to their deaths, so he and his small family flee from the threat of deportation to the extermination camps in the East to join their previous customers and war comrades from the First World War. He now asks them for help, and they agree: while the blonde Marga and her daughter are quartered on the Aschoff family's farm as a "bombed-out Dortmund resident" – even though Heinrich Aschoff has been a member of the Nazi Party since 1930. Menne may hide in the stables of the farmers. Two farming families protect the small family, while endangering their lives. Under false names, the Spiegels hide for the almost endless two years until the end of the war. [3]
A moving historical drama about a Jewish family that is hidden from the Nazis by farmers out of Christian charity. The heroic individual case illustrates the moral failure of millions."
— BR online [4]
An important film against forgetting, which reminds without false pathos that one can follow one's conscience even in difficult times.
— Cinema [5]
Filming took place from mid-August to early October 2008, over 38 days in Dülmen, Billerbeck, Liesborn (Auf der Drift), Lippstadt, Oer-Erkenschwick, and other Westphalian locations, often using original props.
Paul Spiegel was leader of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the main spokesman of the German Jews. He was widely praised for his leadership of the German Jewish community, which had grown from the remnants left by the Nazis into the third largest Jewish community in western Europe.
Beate Auguste Klarsfeld is a Franco-German journalist and Nazi hunter who, along with her French husband, Serge, became famous for their investigation and documentation of numerous Nazi war criminals, including Kurt Lischka, Alois Brunner, Klaus Barbie, Ernst Ehlers and Kurt Asche.
Blood and soil is a nationalist slogan expressing Nazi Germany's ideal of a racially defined national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). By it, rural and farm life forms are idealized as a counterweight to urban ones. It is tied to the contemporaneous German concept of Lebensraum, the belief that the German people were to expand into Eastern Europe, conquering and displacing the native Slavic and Baltic population via Generalplan Ost.
Veronica Maria Cäcilia Ferres is a German actress. Her 2007 portrayal of Sara Bender in Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie, based on the true story of Jutta Fleck, earned her the award for Best Actress at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis.
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk was the organization responsible for public broadcasting in the German Länder of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia from 22 September 1945 to 31 December 1955. Until 1954, it was also responsible for broadcasting in West Berlin. NWDR was a founder member of the consortium of public-law broadcasting institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany, the ARD.
Ochtrup is a town in the district of Steinfurt, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated approximately 20 km west of Rheine and 20 km east of Enschede.
Nova Meierhenrich is a German television presenter and actress.
Bayerischer Fernsehpreis is an award presented by the government of Bavaria, Germany since 1989. The prize symbol is the "Blue Panther", a figure from the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory. The prize money is €10,000.
Ingrid van Bergen is a German film actress. She has appeared in 100 films since 1954. She was born in Free City of Danzig, today Gdańsk, Poland.
Hubert "Hubsi" von Meyerinck was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 280 films between 1921 and 1970.
Klaus Johannes Behrendt is a German actor. Since 1992 he has starred in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk version of the popular television crime series Tatort; he also starred in the 2008 film Die Bienen – Tödliche Bedrohung.
Hans-Otto Borgmann was a German film music composer during the Third Reich.
Aaron Altaras is a German actor.
Marga Spiegel was a German woman who went into hiding with her daughter in 1943 during the Holocaust of World War II. Her husband also hid during the war, but separately from the family since it was harder to conceal a Jewish man of military age. He was also well-known in the farming community as a cattle and horse trader. Even though they had some close calls, Siegal and her family survived for several years with the help of several farmers and their families.
Manasse Herbst was a German-speaking silent movie actor, child-actor, theater actor and singer from Jewish descent. He participated in 416 sold-out performances of the operetta White Horse Inn between 1930 and 1932 in Berlin. During the first half of the 1930s, Herbst had a relationship with the German Baron Gottfried von Cramm, one of the more popular tennis players of the time. Because of this, von Cramm was sentenced in a Nazi propaganda trial that was recognized all over the world. Due to his Jewish background and the Nazi prohibition to perform his job, Herbst fled from Germany in 1936. Later, he became a U.S. citizen.
Blut und Ehre was a Nazi political slogan that was used by the Hitler Youth, among others.
Hans Schmitz-Wiedenbrück was the alias of Hans Schmitz was a German painter of sacral, peasant and Nazi propaganda arts. He belonged to the Wiedenbrücker Schule school of arts.
Thelma Buabeng is a German actress.
Christian Redl is a German actor and singer.
Christel Magdalena Huber, known as Grischa Huber was a German theatre and film actress. She is known for the lead role in the film Under the Pavement Lies the Strand, a "cult film of the German feminist movement", which earned her the Filmband in Gold in 1975.
