From Hell to Hell

original title:
From Hell to Hell
other titles:
(Von Hölle zu Hölle)
country / year of production:
original length:
105 min. , color
premiere:
D: 28 September 2000
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cinematographer:
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plot synopsis:
The polish city Kielce before the outbreak of the Second World War: The jewish couple Hendrik and Helena Golde deliver a baby, the girl Fela, which they, after the german invasion, confide to the friendly polish couple Andrzej and Anna Sikorski in order to protect her against the menacing deportation. After this, Helena is displaced to a comcentration camp, whereas Hendrik is able to escape to Russia. Fela gets “adopted” by Andrzej and Anna for this time and regards them as her real parents. But simultaneously, she transfers the anti-semitic prejudices of the polish inhabitants. As Hendrik and Helena come back to their homeland after the war and place jewish survivors of the concentration camps in their house, the situation escaletes: A mob of polish inhabitants attack the house of the Goldes, because Hendrik begun in the meantime to retrack resident polish collaborators. In addition to this, the home-coming jews require back their occupied houses and homesteads. Anna Sikorski now marches with the mob to protect “her” child Fela against the bodily mother and to prevent the prepared “unjustness” by the jews. To reach this claim, she doesn’t, like the whole mob, flinch from murder.
literature:
Josef Lederle. "Von Hölle zu Hölle". In: Film-Dienst 53 (2000), 20, 26.
remarks:
The fourth of July 1946, 42 jewish survivors of concentration camps were killed at anti-semitic pogroms by inhabitants of the polish city Kielce.
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