Europa, Europa

EUROPA EUROPA

Director: Agniesza Holland

Writer: Agnieska Holland, Paul Hengge

Stars: Solomon Perel, Morco Hofschneider, Rene Hofschneider

            The thesis of this film is that people will do whatever it takes to survive, especially under conditions of war.  This film is about a young boy who, even though he is Jewish, is able to pass as German because he speaks the language and is very familiar with the culture.  This young man is named Solomon in the film and is very lucky because he has the perfect mixture of talents to survive his circumstances.  Even though Solomon is of Jewish decent he decides to lie to the Nazis and claim that he is of German descent and doesn’t know where his parents are.  He is then recruited to become a Nazi and is put in many awkward situations where he comes very close to being discovered.  It is almost comical the way he has to create lies and has the good luck of not being turned in even after he is discovered to indeed be Jewish because he is circumcised.  During the Second World War, the Nazis targeted Jews as a specific group to eliminate.  The man behind most of this German supremacy ideas was Adolf Hitler wh0 was a Nazi leader.  The film Europa, Europa showed how WWII was a war against civilians like Solomon.  “Everyone was a target in WWII, and the war killed far more civilians than soldiers as government took actions against “radical enemies,” people with different social cultural, and religious beliefs, and those who dissented from a particular ideological line.” (332, Smith)  Another film that re-enacted the Holocaust is Michael Verhoeven’s “The Nasty Girl” (1990).  Like Europa, Europa, Nasty girl only focused on a small part of the Holocaust.  “The two most prominent Holocaust films to have come out of Germany in the last decade are Michael Verholven’s The Nasty Girl and Agnieszka Holland’s Europa, Europa because in real life Solomon is a very ordinary looking man, but in the film he was portrayed as a pretty boy who everyone adored.  This film did not do very well in its native Germany when it was released because of its sensitive subject matter and political viewpoint.  Audiences did not know who to sympathize with.  However, in the U.S. Europa, Europa did very well and won a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.