Movie Review

I have to share a movie with you that I just watched. It's called "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." It tels the story of young Bruno who lives a wealthy lifestyle in Pre-war Germany along with his mother, elder sister, and army Commandant father. The family re-locate to the countryside where his father is assigned to commandeer a prison camp. A few days later, Bruno befriends another youth, strangely dressed in striped pajamas, named Shmuel who lives behind an electrified fence. Bruno will soon find out that he is not permitted to befriend his new friend as he is a Jew, and that the neighboring yard is actually a prison camp for Jews awaiting extermination.

I don't dare say anything else about the movie for fear of letting my emotions give away anything, but it was very touching!!!

2 days before, I had just finished reading this book:

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Anna's daughter Trudy was only four when she and Anna were liberated from Nazi Weimar by an American soldier and went with him to Minnesota, so Trudy can't remember much....but she has one piece of evidence from the past: a family portrait showing Trudy, Anna, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

This too, is a very touching story.

And as I write this, I am watching the Hallmark Presentation of "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler."

The story of Irena Sendler, a social worker who was part of the Polish underground during World War II and was arrested by the Nazi's for saving the lives of nearly 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto.

It shall take some time to recover from the heartwrenching topic covered in these movies and this book. I shall always have a scar on my heart from them.