Meeting point Erasmus
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Meeting point Erasmus |
| Country of production |
Netherlands , Germany |
| Publishing year | 2015 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Annet Betsalel |
| production | Juan Morales Calvo |
| camera | Michael Ballak |
Meeting point Erasmus is a German-Dutch documentary film by Annet Betsalel about the East German illustrator Werner Klemke , who, as a Wehrmacht soldier, saved around 300 Jews from deportation with forged documents. The film premiered in May 2015 at the 21st Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Potsdam and opened in cinemas on August 27, 2015.
content
In 2011 - 17 years after Klemke's death - the Dutch documentary filmmaker Annet Betsalel accidentally discovered documents, photos and letters in the municipal archive of the Bussum synagogue that revealed Klemke's lifelong secret.
Together with his friend and comrade Johannes Gerhardt, Klemke came into contact with Mels de Jong and Eva van Perlstein, whose father was the large Jewish entrepreneur Sam van Perlstein, through the Amsterdam antiquarian bookshop Erasmus. Klemke, who happened to be a Wehrmacht soldier during a visit to Amsterdam and witnessed the “central cleaning of the large ghetto”, gave the family an Aryan identity through forgeries so that they could discard the yellow star and get their assets back. From then on they invested this in hiding those persecuted by the Nazis and thus protecting them from deportation. Klemke supported the network with baptism certificates, passports and ration cards that ensured the survival of the hidden Jews.
criticism
Julia Teichmann wrote in Filmdienst that “Klemke's exciting film, made from archive material and partly animated illustrations, is not limited to the unknown episode from the artist's life, but also traces his life and work after 1945 as a very successful illustrator and university lecturer in the GDR ".
In the Berliner Zeitung , Cornelia Geißler judged that the film draws a “warm-hearted portrait of the man who appeared rather cautious as a public person” and was valued by his students for “his foresight in an environment of narrow-mindedness”. The reports of Klemke's children created a “different picture than the average citizen in the GDR could have”. In addition, Betsalel makes a significant contribution to “keeping Klemke's work from being forgotten”.
Web links
- Official website
- Christian Schröder: Counterfeits for life. Der Tagesspiegel , September 1, 2015.
Individual evidence
- ↑ 21st Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Potsdam starts on May 10th. In: filmportal.de . Deutsches Filminstitut , May 4, 2015, accessed on November 3, 2017 .
- ↑ Julia Teichmann: Meeting point Erasmus. Filmdienst , 17/2015, accessed on May 17, 2016 (short review).
- ↑ Cornelia Geißler: Documentary “Meeting Point Erasmus”: How Werner Klemke saved the lives of many Jews with forged passports. In: Berliner Zeitung . August 26, 2015, accessed November 3, 2017 .