An uns glaubt Gott nicht mehr (God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore)
Original post date: 1 June 1987
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
The title may sound kind of strange, but if you were a Jew living in Europe in the 1930s, it might have been a thought that crossed your mind. This film is the first installment of The Austrian Trilogy, which is a pretentious way of saying that it is the first episode of a three-part mini-series that was on Austrian TV. The film follows a Jewish youth in 1938 in Vienna whose father is beaten to death, leaving the young man with no family. He finds it impossible to get out of Austria legally, so he crosses the border illegally into Czechoslovakia and becomes a refugee in Prague with lots of other Jews who are trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazi army. Ferdinand (Ferry, for short) takes up with a gentile who has escaped from Dachau, where he was imprisoned for helping Jews escape. The gentile, who goes by the nickname Ghandi, falls in love with a Jewish woman. When the Germans arrive in Prague, Ferry and the couple have made their escape to Paris (not because they have “valid documents but because of other people’s sloppiness,” as one friend observes). Of course, the Germans make it to France too, and ironically Ferry and all other German-speaking aliens are interned (sort of like what the Yanks did to the Japanese) as “unreliable elements.” When the Germans come marching through, Ferry and his friends make their escape and manage to get to so-called Free France where they futilely attempt to get on a boat for somewhere else from Marseille. But the French police are cooperating closely with the Nazis in rounding up Jewish fugitives. Tune in tomorrow for part two.
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
The title may sound kind of strange, but if you were a Jew living in Europe in the 1930s, it might have been a thought that crossed your mind. This film is the first installment of The Austrian Trilogy, which is a pretentious way of saying that it is the first episode of a three-part mini-series that was on Austrian TV. The film follows a Jewish youth in 1938 in Vienna whose father is beaten to death, leaving the young man with no family. He finds it impossible to get out of Austria legally, so he crosses the border illegally into Czechoslovakia and becomes a refugee in Prague with lots of other Jews who are trying to stay one step ahead of the Nazi army. Ferdinand (Ferry, for short) takes up with a gentile who has escaped from Dachau, where he was imprisoned for helping Jews escape. The gentile, who goes by the nickname Ghandi, falls in love with a Jewish woman. When the Germans arrive in Prague, Ferry and the couple have made their escape to Paris (not because they have “valid documents but because of other people’s sloppiness,” as one friend observes). Of course, the Germans make it to France too, and ironically Ferry and all other German-speaking aliens are interned (sort of like what the Yanks did to the Japanese) as “unreliable elements.” When the Germans come marching through, Ferry and his friends make their escape and manage to get to so-called Free France where they futilely attempt to get on a boat for somewhere else from Marseille. But the French police are cooperating closely with the Nazis in rounding up Jewish fugitives. Tune in tomorrow for part two.
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