Saviors in the Night

Saviors in the Night (Unter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht) is a German-French film based on a true story by director Ludi Boeken and starring Veronica Ferres and Armin Rohde. The film first premiered at the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.[1] It premiered at German cinemas on 8 October 2009. Ferres plays a Jewish woman, Marga Spiegel, persecuted by the Nazis who eventually survived with the help of farmers in Westphalia. The film is based on her memoirs, published in 1965 as the book Savior in the Night.[2]

Saviors in the Night
GermanUnter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht
Directed byLudi Boeken
StarringVeronica Ferres and Armin Rohde
Release date
  • 1 October 2009 (2009-10-01) (Germany)
LanguageGerman

Plot

Westphalia in 1943: The Jew Siegmund "Menne" Spiegel, a horse dealer, does not want to lead his wife Marga and daughter Karin to their deaths, so he and his small family flee from the threat of deportation to the extermination camps in the East to join their previous customers and war comrades from the First World War. He now asks them for help, and they agree: while the blonde Marga and her daughter are quartered on the Aschoff family's farm as a "bombed-out Dortmund resident" - even though Heinrich Aschoff has been a member of the Nazi Party since 1930. Menne may hide in the stables of the farmers. Two farming families protect the small family, while endangering their lives. Under false names, the Spiegels hide for the almost endless two years until the end of the war.[3]

Reviews

A moving historical drama about a Jewish family that is hidden from the Nazis by farmers out of Christian charity. The heroic individual case illustrates the moral failure of millions."

— BR online[4]

An important film against forgetting, which reminds without false pathos that one can follow one's conscience even in difficult times.

— Cinema[5]

Filming locations

Filming took place from mid-August to early October 2008 over 38 days in Dülmen, Billerbeck, Liesborn (Auf der Drift), Lippstadt, Oer-Erkenschwick, and other Westphalian locations, often using original props.

  • Picture from the location Dülmen
    Picture from the location Dülmen
  • Image from the same location
    Image from the same location

References
  1. "Kinostart von "Unter Bauern" - Interview mit der jüdischen Zeitzeugin Marga Spiegel - Kultur - WDR.de". WDR. 2009-10-10. Retrieved 2023-04-21.
  2. "Unter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht". Spielfilm.de (in German). Retrieved 2023-04-21.
  3. "Wo kommst weg?". Der Spiegel (in German). 1966-10-09. ISSN 2195-1349.
  4. "Kritik zu Unter Bauern – Retter in der Nacht". BR-online (in German). Retrieved 12 November 2009.
  5. "Unter Bauern - Retter in der Nacht [Among peasants - rescuers in the night]". Cinema (in German). Retrieved 16 March 2022.

Further reading
  • Marga Spiegel: Rescuers in the night. How a Jewish family survived in a Münsterland hideout. 7th edition. Lit Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8258-3595-8 (The 1st edition was published in 1969. Reprint as a series of articles in 1961/1962 in the magazine "Der Sämann" (organ of the Catholic rural people's movement).)
  • Marga Spiegel: Farmers as saviors. How a Jewish family survived. With a foreword by Veronica Ferres. 2nd Edition. Lit Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8258-0942-3
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