Back to Berlin “Just remember, for remembering, we honor the dead and save them from dying again in oblivion.” by Mark Tapson
https://www.frontpagemag.com/back-to-berlin/
Since the October 7 terror attacks in Israel, anti-Zionism has surged on both the Left and the Right. While decent people of the world reeled in horror at the atrocities committed by Hamas, left-wing Jew haters throughout the Western world took to the streets to celebrate the terrorist group’s savagery and to call for the eradication of Israel. This has given right-wing antisemites the cover to came out of the woodwork and cluster around online influencers like slimy Nick Fuentes and grifter Candace Owens.
Speaking of Owens: her latest antisemitic inanity is her defense of Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele’s medical experiments on Birkenau prisoners, claiming that the reports of his sick experiments on twins, for which there is abundant documentation, are so “completely absurd” that they sound suspiciously like “bizarre propaganda.” “Why would you do that?” she wondered conspiratorially. “Literally, even if you were the most evil person in the world, that’s a tremendous waste of time and supplies.” It’s truly depressing to realize that Owens, who fancies herself to be such a free-thinking individual that she is neither a “flat-earther” nor a “round-earther,” has over five million followers on X (formerly Twitter), a significant number of whom are loud-and-proud anti-Zionists.
The point is, Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial have gone shockingly, unapologetically mainstream. So forgive the belated review of a six-year-old film, but now seems an especially urgent and relevant time to bring attention to an underappreciated Holocaust-related documentary of unexpected emotional power called Back to Berlin, which cuts through the usually overwhelming statistics of the victims of Hitler’s Final Solution, by highlighting the personal stories of a small number of Holocaust survivors and their families.
In this 75-minute film from 2018, cameras follow eleven Israeli Jews on an epic 2015 motorcycle trek from Tel Aviv to Berlin – nearly 3000 miles across nine countries. Their mission is to follow in the footsteps – or the tire tracks, if you will – of an original batch of eleven Jewish bikers who traveled that route to participate in the infamous 1936 Olympic Games, where Hitler himself was in attendance.
Nearly 80 years later, the new set of bikers set out to deliver a flaming torch to the very same stadium. The torch is associated with the Maccabi (or Maccabiah) Games (often known as the Jewish Olympics), named after the Jewish hero Judah Maccabee, who led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BC. First held in Tel Aviv in 1932, the Games were set up at a time when Jewish athletes were suffering discrimination. In 2015 the Games were held for the first time in Berlin, “the crucible of Hitler’s final solution,” as the narrator says.
During the journey, the bikers share how they or their family members survived the Holocaust – or didn’t. “For some,” the narrator, actor Jason Isaacs, intones, “it’s a chance to learn about the past. For others, it’s a chance to reveal it.” During the journey, the bikers share stories of grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, who witnessed and endured horrors that many, if they survived, could never bring themselves to discuss. Many others did not survive.
The road trip documentary weaves in historical footage and the numbers of Holocaust victims in each location as the bikers cross through countries that were the World War II-era sites of terrible Jew-hatred and genocide: Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland among them. Film Review Daily adds:
Those making this journey varied in age, but all respond in their own way to the history of the Holocaust: those who experienced it and survived, those who lost family members and those who represent a younger generation drawing their own lessons from the history evoked by the places through which they pass…
“I don’t pretend to make my story any bigger than any story,” one biker states. “I think all the small stories in this tour are part of a bigger picture. All the stories were horrific in the same – it’s like the same, just different people. More people died in one place than another, but still it was the same Holocaust.”
“When you hear one person’s story, it tells you the story of everyone else who can’t tell their own story,” added another biker, a young woman.
One of the bikers enters an abandoned Romanian fort in which his uncle had been tortured by fascists; the uncle and 155 other Jews were then taken to a nearby field, stripped naked, and shot. Another biker’s parents were survivors of the Romanian Holocaust; to this day they refuse to talk to him about the experience.
The bikers decide to make a detour to Auschwitz along the way. One biker’s grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor who has also joined the journey, tells for the first time in 70 years of the traumatizing Nazi horrors he witnessed there as a boy of 6. Another biker’s grandmother tells how she and dozens of other women survived Auschwitz when their Nazi guards began to march them off to work one day, not realizing that the women prisoners behind them had simply stayed put until the guards were out of sight; they were rescued by the arrival of Russian soldiers.
At the location of the famous resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto, the bikers decide to commemorate it as the most appropriate spot at which to light the Maccabi torch en route. On the twenty-third day of their trek they reach Berlin, and the following day they enter the stadium itself where the 1936 Olympics were held. On the opening evening of the Maccabi Games, the bikers motor into the stadium carrying the torch used to launch the Games.
Written, directed, and produced by Catherine Lurie, who emerges from behind the camera only at the film’s end for a very brief statement about the historic nature of the journey, Back to Berlin is dedicated to:
- The 3 teams of 11 Maccabiah bikers – 1930’s.
- 11 Israeli Athletes massacred by the Palestinian Terrorist Group, Black October, at the Munich Olympics – 1972.
- The 11 Victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting – 2018.
Searingly emotional, steeped in the tragedy of man’s inhumanity to man but laced with humor and camaraderie, Back to Berlin is a simple but memorable tribute to the will to survive, the determination of the Jewish people, and what novelist Milan Kundera called “the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
Despite the disturbing context, the film ends on a triumphal note of hope, determination, and survival. It is unforgettably emotional. The Rotten Tomatoes movie review site lists only five reviews and fewer than 50 customer ratings for Back to Berlin, but those reviewers and audience alike gave it a perfect 100% score. You can watch it for free (with ads) on YouTube; for a much better viewing experience, rent it on Amazon Prime for a mere $2.
“Remember them their anguish and their death,” reads an Elie Weisel poem quoted at the end of the film. “Do not recoil in horror, do not descend into despair at man’s inhumanity to man. Just remember, for remembering, we honor the dead and save them from dying again in oblivion.”
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
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