Het Bittere Kruid (1985)

Countries - Netherlands  |  
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Synopsis by Eleanor Mannikka

This unfortunate interpretation of the life of a Jewish girl in Holland -- who escapes being sent to German death camps in 1942 while the rest of her family is deported -- is loosely based on the autobiographical novel by Marga Minco. The author sued to insert a disclaimer before the title that a fictional Nazi family introduced in this film and the young Jewish girl could never have had the relationship shown, a relationship contrary to her book and her experience. Screenwriter Maurice Noel adds the Nazi family whose father is a VIP in the Nazi youth, whose son is a Nazi soldier, and whose daughter makes friends with the Jewish Sara (Ester Spitz) while the two are in the hospital. Later, viewers are to believe that Sara visits the Nazi family often and is welcomed -- wearing her yellow star -- in complete safety. That assumption is certainly an affront to the truth: the real "Sara" was hidden for three years by friends in the Dutch Resistance and miraculously escaped deportation and death only because of their own risk in hiding her.

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Keywords

escape, Holocaust, Nazism, rescue, war, writing