The Liberation

Post 00043 | August 24th 2023

The post deals with Nazism, occupation and anti-German sentiment. If you don't like reading about these topics, you might want to skip this one.

I have recently reunited with an old friend and we have been enjoying to see films. I think I have been to the cinema more times this past month than I have the last decade. Tonight we went to the premiere of The Liberation, starring Pilou Asbæk. He plays a headmaster during the end of the war who is forced to receive 500 German refugees. Against their better judgment, they are compelled to aid the refugees who are becoming sick and dying, even though helping Germans is massively frowned upon. After the war he gets picked up by the freedom fighters to be interrogated and tortured.

The film really struck a nerve with me. Hopefully, I'll never experience what they went through during the occupation. Having one's freedom replaced with rule from the worst ideology is terrible, and it's hard to blame anyone for fighting it with desperate means. At the same time, the film doesn't hold back from drawing comparisons between Nazis and the freedom fighters. The refugees are denied healthcare and after the war they are put in internment camps and when they start dying, they are buried in mass graves outside the graveyard to keep them separate from "our people". It's the same kind of dehumanisation we usually associate with the Nazis, the people the resistance is fighting against. This was however the zeitgeist, even among the ordinary people. It was eye-opening seeing one's countrymen being portrayed in such a way.

I wonder what I would have done if it was me. Everyone would like to see themselves as a member of the resistance, committing heroic acts of sabotage to make life difficult for the Nazis. If you have the courage, it seems like the right thing to do. However, when it comes to helping the refugees, I don't think the decision is as clear-cut. Would you help a stranger in need, even if it meant you and your family would be shunned by the community? Could I have a starving person in front of me and refuse to feed them? Doing nothing was what was expected from you. Any aid you offered a German civilian meant the Nazis could focus on keeping their army healthy. I can't argue against that point, but still. I'm not sure I could eat my lunch while people are starving to death just outside my window.

All in all, I highly recommend the film. War movies usually isn't my cup of tea, but I do find post-war movies fascinating. Trying to regain order from the chaos while the desire for revenge looming in the air. Perhaps part of the reason I find the genre interesting is because of how under-explored it is. Only two other works comes to mind: First up, Land of Mine is a pretty recent film depicting German prisoners of war, including teenagers, were tasked with clearing mine fields. The second one is Tenko, a Brtish-Australian TV series from the early 80's that follows a group of women having been captured and placed in an internment camp after the fall of Singapore. I'm not much of a movie buff, so I am sure I'm must be missing some obvious examples - Feel free to drop your recommendations in the guest book and I will add them here.