I saw "Bronstein's Children" several years after reading the original novel by Jurek Becker. I remembered the name of Jurek Becker as a writer of the German TV series "Liebling Kreuzberg", which I watched in the 1980s. I loved the series for its humor, wit, wisdom, and constructive attitude towards life and other people. I didn't know then that Jurek Becker was born in Lodz and was a Holocaust survivor. Only some years later I read the novel "Bronstein's Children", where I learned some more facts about Jurek Becker. In the novel, Hans Bronstein (Matthiaus Paul) seems to be an "alter ego" of the writer himself, and Aaron Bronstein (Armin Muehler-Stahl) of his father. The motives of Hans's growing up and entering adulthood in East Berlin, as well as the relations of Hans with his father Aaron and sister Rachel (Karin Eickelbaum) were quite appealing and interesting to me. But I am not sure about the part of the plot in which Aaron and his colleagues kidnap and imprison suspected concentration camp kapo (Rolf Hoppe). If it is to be interpreted symbolically, then it is okay. But if we have to take this literally, it goes too far for me. As a Pole, who was born well after WW2, I probably don't have enough insight to understand the emotions related to concentration camp trauma, but the law is for all of us. Even the biggest criminals have their rights, and only the courts have the right to judge people and pass sentences on them. So I had to put a big question mark and filter out this part of the plot. The same goes for the film. Otherwise, I watched the film with great interest. It was well done (the director was the famous Jerzy Kawalerowicz) and the acting was good. I think that nothing can go wrong when you have such experienced and great actors as Armin Muehler-Stahl and Rolf Hoppe. But considering that my copy of the novel is from the series "Masterpieces of the XX century" by Suddeutsche Zeitung, I rather disagree and think that neither the book nor the film are masterpieces. But I enjoyed reading the novel and watching the film and thought they were both interesting.
