Movies about the Holocaust are vital to remembering what can happen when one person's insane ideology takes root and destroys an entire population.
I can never fully comprehend all that happened during Hitler's reign of terror. I've seen films, read books, watched documentaries, and learned about it in school. But nothing can ever fully and effectively communicate the sheer atrocity of what happened to 6 million Jews. Even harder to comprehend is how nations stood by and watched.
Yesterday, I watched a film that came out a few years ago called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBdalsgNHsM
It is an absolutely gorgeous -- and terrifying -- film about a high-ranking Nazi soldier who takes his family to the German countryside to oversee a Jewish prison camp. The story is told from the 8-year-old son's perspective. In it, he wanders from home and discovers the camp, which he thinks is a work farm. He can't understand why the little boy, who sits just inside the fence, dresses in striped pajamas and won't come out to play. Slowly, as his friendship grows and as he watches his family disintegrate, he begins to understand what is happening.
It's a poignant film, exposing the naivete that many Germans had concerning what was happening under their leader's regime. Like most Holocaust films, there is no happy ending, but the journey getting there is worth the painful ending. The two little would-be friends do a superb job of acting. So amazing.
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