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Movie Review With The Russian Accent: Europa Europa

Europa Europa is a German movie based on the biography of Solomon Perel, a Jewish boy who survived the World War II by successfully hiding his identity and posing as a German. Through unbelievable luck and extraordinary circumstances he escaped persecution, bombings, lived in the Soviet orphanage, spent time on the front lines with Germans, participated in the arrest of Joseph Stalin’s son, was taken to the Hitler Youth school and was arrested and then liberated by the American troops. Solomon Perel himself appears in the end of the movie as a living proof of this amazing story. This movie stands apart from other war and Holocaust films with its dark sense of humor and satirical characters of both the Russians and the Germans. The war is going on, people die, families destroyed but in the middle of all that a sixteen-year old manages to maintain his will to survive and not to lose his identity.

I wrote this review mainly to include the following clip of a lesson in Eugenics in the Hitler Youth school where Solomon Perel was trying to hide his Jewish identity, the only identifiable sign of which was his circumcision. When he gets called by the teacher he is convinced that his cover is blown but instead the teacher proceeds to explain why Solomon is a perfect specimen of the Aryan male. Originally I was going to post just the clip with an obvious title but a post like this will bring too many unwelcome hits. The clip has subtitles but it’s only few minutes long so stay with it.