![]() ![]() They kind of sacrificed themselves to live my life." As Allied bombings of Berlin increased near the end of the war, "they often went into public bunkers with me so I wouldn't be seen in their basement. "These people sheltering me had to live with just one food ration card," Lévy tells NPR. They recall a culture of denunciation so pervasive that sometimes Jews denounced other Jews in the hope of avoiding a horrible fate.īut they also talk with admiration about the people who helped them survive. In the film, for which interviews were conducted 10 years ago, the four survivors talk of the constant fear, the hunger and cold they experienced. Eugen Herman-Friede escaped suspicion by wearing the Hitler Youth uniform of the son of the family who hid him. He knew she was Jewish but kept the secret. Another, Ruth Arndt, was a young woman who worked in a German officer's house. One of the other survivors, Cioma Schönhaus, was an art student who became an expert forger of documents. Today, Lévy is the only one of those four still living. In addition to Lévy's story, the movie focuses on the survival of three other young Jewish Berlin residents who made it through the war years. "It proved it happened and that some people were helping, and that made a difference." "These are some of the last victims of Nazism who could tell their story in a very interesting and touching way," he says. It was released in Germany in 2017 and aired on German prime-time television last week. Räfle's movie, a drama re-created around the interviews with survivors, is interspersed with footage of Berlin during the war. And I thought this is something that never happened before." Every day, someone can notice something strange about you. "They have to climb into different identities, and these stories are so full of tension and emotions because every day is full of risks," he tells NPR. German director and producer Claus Räfle, a 30-year veteran of the film industry, says he made The Invisibles because he finds the stories of people who have to hide themselves in their own hometown amazing. "I had to try to lose myself in the masses and forget that I was scared and that I was someone who once submitted to the Nazi race laws. "You just had to ignore the fear in your gut and push it away, become someone else," Lévy says. Staying with these family friends, Lévy removed the yellow star that Nazis forced Jews to wear, dyed her hair blond and began a new life as Hannelore Winkler. It would be the first of many such places of refuge. ![]() Then she made her way to the home of non-Jewish friends of her parents, the only people she felt she could trust. Taking only her coat and handbag, Lévy hid in her large apartment building until nightfall. In February 1943, the Gestapo carried out the Fabrik-Aktion or "factory action," the last major arrest of Jews to be deported to Auschwitz. She was living alone and working as a forced laborer at a factory, sewing parachutes. Her grandmother and another Jewish family she had lived with had been deported. ![]()
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