THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A television drama exploring the guilt of ordinary Germans during the Second World War has become a ratings sensation in Germany, reaching more than seven million viewers.
Our Mothers, Our Fathers follows the lives of five young men and women – two brothers who become Wehrmacht soldiers, a singer, a nurse and their Jewish friend.
The drama begins on the eve of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and shows how the young people are rapidly corrupted by the Third Reich. One of the soldiers executes a Russian prisoner, while the nurse betrays a Jewish patient to the SS. The Jewish man is shown escaping the Nazis to find shelter with Polish partisans.
The three-part series has been hailed by critics as a "turning point" in German television for examining the crimes of the Third Reich at an individual level. The screenplay of Our Mothers, Our Fathers draws on the experiences of the film-makers' parents – the screenwriter Stefan Kolditz's father was a 19-year-old soldier on the eastern front, while a scene in which a Jewish child is shot was based on an event witnessed by the producer Nico Hofmann's father. » | Jeevan Vasagar, Berlin | Friday, March 22, 2013
