The Invisibles

Josef Goebbels declared Berlin Berlin Judenfrein, cleared of Jews in the fourth year of WWII. And yet 1700 or perhaps more remained, went under ground and survived, thanks to native intelligence and the good Germans who protected them as best as they could. Director Claus Raefle's camera follows four survivors, some alive at the time of production. With a savvy crosscutting of newsreels of the early 40s Berlin, recreation of life clandestinely in the open and interviews with the survivors add a depth of understanding and immediacy of Hitler's race war against German Jews. The narrative is gripping and grim, but uncompromisingly forthright. Time has hardly softened the film's import, for today we see in the media horror stories of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, Yemen, Sudan and sorry to say Israel in the Palestinian occupied territories. We saw in Rwanda and Kosovo., Iraq and Syria, Libya... The novel Gore Vidal spoke of historical amnesia, a truth that is ignored, as events 80 years ago, let alone five years ago seem so distant. Forgetfulness or historical amnesia is a heavy legacy for as Santayana famously said, if you learn nothing from history you're fated to repeat it.

"The Invisibles" is a sanitized version of what could have been an important film about Jews in Berlin who stayed behind and blended in with the rest of the Berliners during WWII. We are told approx. 7,000 Jews evaded capture but that only 1,500 survived to the end of the war. This picture is handsomely produced but is a bloodless rendition of what must have been the case at the time. No violent encounters, no shootings and no sense of the scope of the matter.

The semi-documentary style is distracting, as the actors portray some of the survivors, who are interspersed with the story. Continuity is the casualty as the narrative is repeatedly interrupted to interview those survivors again and again. Well done film that needed some Hollywood 'punch' and some added tension to avoid onscreen blandness.

A drama that seamlessly combines interviews with the last living jewish eyewitnesses with recreated film scenes of berlin in the year 1943. In fact this might be one of the last movies with actual contemporary witnesses. Under the many films that cover the holocaust of the jews and more specific the time when jewish people had to live in the shadows, this film is special because the stories of the contemporary witnesses are so moving and astonishing thrilling. A very moving feature with a focus on positive aspects and some of the last good people in the third Reich.

Interesting film telling the story of these terrible times from another perspective, with the heroes being the German people who risked their lives to help many young Jews hide underground in World War 2

This is a must-see movie. A masterpiece of this genre...a blend of interviews, re-enactment and war-time film footage interspersed.

The individuals who were interviewed were eloquent, charming and insightful.

How important is to see how many Germans risked their lives to do the right thing. Rather amazing. I have watched the movie several times, and am moved to tears by the end.

Claus Räfle is amazing. It is such a pity that the film didn't have a wider distribution. But the film, will one day, get the exposure it deserves.