Germans & Jews

Germans & Jews (2016) is a documentary directed by Janina Quint. The present-day thinking in Germany about Jews and the Holocaust is a fascinating topic. The magnitude of the Holocaust is so immense that it's still hard for people to comprehend it. The number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling, of course, but their children and grandchildren still struggle to understand the evil. The number of Germans who actively participated in Nazi atrocities is also dwindling. However, in parallel fashion, their children and grandchildren struggle as well.

The film is based on a dinner party given for Christian and Jewish Germans. Although the publicity for the film emphasizes the party, footage from the party only represents a small fraction of what we see on the screen. Mostly, we get learned people, who offer profound insights into Germany then and now. However, a movie can only go so far with "talking heads."

It's fascinating to me that Jews are returning to Germany in substantial numbers. Germany has become a beacon of liberty in a world that's moving to the right. The theme of the film is that Germany has come to grips with the horrors of its past, and is focused on preventing these horrors from happening again. If that's true, we can have hope that other countries--including ours--may ultimately come to grasp with their own set of historical brutalities, and keep them from occurring again.

We saw this film at the excellent Little Theatre, as part of the wonderful Rochester International Jewish Film Festival. This festival is a gem in Rochester's cultural crown, and each year the movies get better. If you can't see this film on the large screen, it will work on the small screen. It's not extraordinary, but it's certainly worth seeing.

"That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal." Elie Wiesel

Who would have thought in 1945 that in 2016 Germany would be the fastest-growing Jewish community in the world? The documentary Germans and Jews not only verifies this fact but also goes on to record the testimony to its accuracy from both Germans and Jews in Berlin.

The framing device of a dinner with Jews and Germans is inspired for allowing us to experience the spectrum of feeling without the work being compromised by manipulative structure of appropriately placed talking heads.

What makes this doc so entertaining is that no talking head seems interested in hyperbole about the counter-intuitive idea that Germany is safer than Israel for Jews. It's no secret that Berlin is a modern bastion of tolerance and social progression, yet to think that it embraces a multi-culturalism that eclipses Tel Aviv's, relative to its Jewish homeland status, is still unnerving. However, having Palestine at your doorstep changes thing dramatically.

Obviously having Janina Quint, a non-Jewish German, as director and Tal Recananti, an American Jew, as executive producer, helps give the doc a balanced feel, even if it leans in favor of Jewish goodness in a secular world that largely has passed beyond the Holocaust in time and sentiment.

Indeed, in sympathy for the younger generation, history professor Fritz Stern, who escaped the holocaust, believes the time has come to put the past behind them.

The harmony seems almost unbelievable, but there it is amid my preconceived notions of an eternal clash between history and cultures. Who would have thought Berlin a home for democracy and liberal inclusiveness? See it for yourself in the fascinating Germans and Jews.