Nackt unter Wölfen

War drama. We are in World War II and one of the many Nazi concentration camps. Everything indicates that Axis forces are losing against the Allies and the captured Jews hope to be freed soon. But they know SS can execute everyone in the camp before the allied forces arrive. So they've saved some weapons to fight back. But one of the new prisoners has the orphaned 3-year-old boy of a lost friend. Everyone there knows that if they tell the SS, the child will die. But as long as they hide it, they're in danger of both themselves and the counterattack they're preparing. Although it is a hypothetical story it realistically shows the events of that time. Also this film has real documentary of video and broadcast of that time. Serious film and with very good and convincing actors, while demonstrating the messages of that period. The lives of those who did not belong to the Nazis had absolutely no value. Everyday life in the concentration camp in the film is only a minimal sample of the events of the time. Overall excellent work, one of the very good films of the genre. It is proposed to everyone and especially to those who question the true history...

This movie is a good remake of the old one with still holding the details. The realism was just phenomal with good storyline.

The film is based on a novelization of the true story of a boy who was brought to Buchenwald with his father (not a stranger as depicted in the film) near the end of the war, while the mother and sister were killed in Auschwitz. The novel was written by a man who himself was a prisoner at Buchenwald for eight years, which lends credibility to the scene he paints. Nevertheless, some aspects of the situation in the camp and some dramatic events in the story were implausible. For me this undercut the grim realism and emotional impact of the film. It turns out that the actual story is both more tragic and morally ambiguous (search "buchenwald boy guardian" to learn more), whereas the film rather simplistically aims to depict "the best and worst of humanity."

I first heard about Buchenwald before I started kindergarten. My parents were talking in the living room late at night and they didn't realize I was in the hallway listening. My uncle was the Army photographer (in the Signal Corps) who accompanied the troops as they liberated Buchenwald. This film, for all of it's merits, seems like a whitewash. It didn't even scratch the surface of the horrors of Buchenwald. When the troops arrived there were human beings, still alive though just skin and bones, stacked like cordwood (i.e. layer upon layer of human beings, stacked in alternating directions). Not just one stack, there were many, many stacks lined up and prepared to be moved into the ovens. When he visited the home of the camp commander he photographed lamps with shades made from human skin, skin with tattoos. My father spoke of drums using human skin. There were other things. These images have polluted my mind from my youngest years. I barely knew what tattoos were...only because of Popeye the Sailor man, and when the drums were mentioned, I had the image of bongo drums because I heard these things in '61 or'62 and bongo drums were all the rage. I remember these things though I just heard them once. My uncle's photographs are in the Library of Congress. He never took another photograph in his life, never smiled, never visited the mountains, never visited the snow, and never spoke of what he had witnessed except once in 1961 or '62 in a special meeting with his father, his brothers, and his brother in law. The film is a good story, but the scenes of the camp and the prisoners seem like a Sunday picnic versus the reality. It felt more like history was being covered up than illuminated by this film.

This is a superbly done film but don't watch it if you're already in a downer. Or you don't have access to a stiff drink. It is grim and graphic. The violence and horror are simply stated but not exploited. It also gets beyond the Holocaust, portraying the seldom documented horrors the Nazis inflicted on non Jewish political prisoners. Nobody knows what life in the camps was like unless they had lived through it. But this may come closer than most such pictures. Dark and unrelentingly morbid, it is still a worthwhile watch but not an easy one. You will finish watching by pondering how an educated, civilized nation like Germany let this happen and by asking yourself how you might have reacted to the many moral dilemmas posed in the story. Not a film to enjoy but certainly one to watch!