Europa, Europa

This drama was based on the true story of a young German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Nazis. Solomon Perel ( Marco Hofschneider ) is the son of a Jewish shoe salesman coming of age in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler . In 1938, a group of Nazis attack Solomon's family home; his sister is killed, and 13-year-old Solomon flees to Poland. Solomon winds up in an orphanage operated by Stalinist forces; when German forces storm Poland, Solomon's fluent German allows him to join the Nazis as a translator, posing as Josef Peters, an ethnic German. In time, "Peters" is made a member of the elite Hitler Youth, but since Solomon is circumcised, he can be easily revealed as a Jew, and he lives in constant fear that his secret will be discovered. Solomon's close calls include an attempted seduction by Robert Kellerman ( André Wilms ), a homosexual officer, and his relationship with Leni ( Julie Delpy ), a beautiful but violently anti-Semitic woman who wants to bear his child for the glory of the master race. Europa, Europa (shown in Europe as Hitlerjunge Salomon ) also features the real Solomon Perel , who appears briefly as himself. — Mark Deming