This week, Sarah’s Key and The Debt explore aspects of the Holocaust. Sarah’s Key is the story of the French round-up of French Jews in 1942, and of how a present day investigation shakes up several lives. The Debt is about a team of three Mossad agents charged with kidnapping a Nazi war criminal out of 1964’s East Berlin – and how they must revisit the mission 30 years later. I recommend both movies.
The Holocaust has inspired many movies. Here is my list of the 5 Essential Holocaust Films.
One of them is the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary. One of the central questions of the Holocaust is how could ordinary humans tolerate and even enable such monstrous acts? Blind Spot is the story of Traudl Junge who, as a rural, naive 22-year-old, happened on a job in Hitler’s secretarial pool. After the war, she lived in obscurity for decades. Wracked with guilt, she was interviewed for 90 minutes shortly before her death by a filmmaker who lost his parents in the Holocaust. This 90 minute interview is the core of Blind Spot.