Holocaust in Film 2022, Film #2: Europa Europa
- Free admission
- Free popcorn is provided for all attendees
- Stay tuned after the screening for a discussion of the film led by local film director, producer, and historian, Michele Forman
ATTENTION: In order to reduce this risk of COVID-19 transmission, the audience at all screenings will be limited and masks will be required. Registration for these films will close once capacity has been reached.
About Film #3: My Italian Secret
PLOT
Europa Europa is based on the true story of a young German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Nazis. Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) is the son of a Jewish shoe salesman coming of age in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1938, a group of Nazis attack Solomon’s family home; his sister is killed, and 13-year-old Solomon flees to Poland. Solomon winds up in an orphanage operated by Stalinist forces; when German forces storm Poland, Solomon’s fluent German allows him to join the Nazis as a translator, posing as Josef Peters, an ethnic German. In time, Peters is made a member of the elite Hitler Youth, but since Solomon is circumcised, he can be easily revealed as a Jew, and he lives in constant fear that his secret will be discovered. Solomon’s close calls include an attempted seduction by Robert Kellerman (André Wilms), a homosexual officer, and his relationship with Leni (Julie Delpy), a beautiful but violently anti-Semitic woman who wants to bear his child for the glory of the master race.
REVIEWS
“Holland lays Solly’s story out without any fuss or editorializing. He is perceived without blinkers, as someone who did what he had to do to survive. The incidents bounce along so rapidly that we don’t have time to be judgmental; we’re too busy gasping at the twists and turns in Solly’s odyssey. We’re constantly reminded of what is uppermost in his mind–that the only alternative to his impersonations is death.”
–Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times
“Brilliant, biting, bitterly funny epic about a Jewish teenager’s stranger-than-fiction adventures during World War II. ”
–John Hartl, The Seattle Times
“There are a great many movies about the tragic experience of the Jews during the Second World War, but only a handful as passionate, as subtly intelligent, as universal as this one. In Europa Europa, Agnieszka Holland tackles a great theme and, in the process, has made a great movie.”
–Hal Hinson, The Washington Post
“As no other Holocaust film quite has, Europa, Europa, with dreamlike clarity, refuses to let us forget that hate works. And that self-hate works even better.”
–Jay Carr, The Boston Globe
FILM TRAILER
PARKING
Parking Garage at the Pizitz Building
The Pizitz Parking Deck entrance is located on the corner of 1st Avenue North & 18th Street North.
Parking Rates (cash or credit card):
0-2 hours FREE
2-3 hours $5
3-4 hours $10
Street Parking
Metered parking is available throughout most of downtown. Paying the meter is only required between the hours of 8:00am and 6:00 pm, Monday-Friday, making street parking free in the evenings and on weekends.
