Europa Europa

Europa Europa (, lit., "Hitler Youth Salomon") is a 1990 historical war drama film directed by Agnieszka Holland, and starring Marco Hofschneider, Julie Delpy, Hanns Zischler, and André Wilms. It is based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel, a German-Jewish boy who escaped the Holocaust by masquerading as a Nazi and joining the Hitler Youth. Perel himself appears briefly as "himself" in the film's finale. The film's title refers to World War II's division of continental Europe, resulting in a constant national shift of allegiances, identities, and front lines. The film is an international co-production between the German company CCC Film and companies in France and Poland. Europa Europa won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1992. Plot In 1938, in Nazi Germany, on the eve of thirteen-year-old Solomon "Solek" Perel's bar mitzvah, Kristallnacht occurs. Solek evades the Nazis and later learns that his sister has been murdered. His father decides the family will move to his birthplace of Łódź in Poland, believing it will be safer there. Less than a year later, World War II begins, and Germany invades Poland. Solek's family decides he and his brother Isaak should flee to Eastern Europe. The brothers head for the eastern border of Poland, only to learn the Soviets have invaded. The brothers are separated, and Solek ends up in a Soviet orphanage in Grodno with other Polish refugee children. Solek lives in the orphanage for two years, where he joins the Komsomol, receives a communist education, and learns Russian. He takes a romantic interest in Inna, a young instructor who defends him when the authorities discover his class origin is bourgeois. Solek receives a letter from his parents informing him of their imprisonment in the Łódź Ghetto.