#THE INVISIBLES MOVIE MOVIE#

Schonhaus, for instance, forged hundreds of passports and used one of them to cross the border into Switzerland just prior to his imminent capture. They hid in abandoned buildings or were hidden by righteous Germans, and all had epic stories. He ultimately decided to concentrate the film on two women and two men: Hanni Levy, Ruth Gumpel, Cioma Schonhaus and Eugen Friede. With the help of historians, he tracked down and interviewed 20 or so of these survivors who stayed in Berlin. Supposedly, Rafle was told, she was a subject of the popular mid-1950s Ralph Edwards documentary show “This is Your Life.” That a Jew managed to survive in Berlin during the war amazed and fascinated Rafle, and his mind filled with cinematic possibilities. In the research phase, an old man told him that he had information about a young Jewish woman who was hidden by the establishment’s owner and immigrated to America after the war. He was shooting a documentary in 2004 about the legendary Salon Kitty, a brothel that German intelligence bugged to get dirt on high rollers, both Germans and visiting dignitaries.

#THE INVISIBLES MOVIE MOVIE#

Part documentary, part cinematic re-creation, the movie weaves together footage of interviews with four of these survivors into a slightly fictionalized docudrama.įor co-screenwriter and director Claus Rafle, the project started in an unlikely place: a bordello.

It’s a story that has been told before - in 1982, Leonard Gross published “The Last Jews of Berlin,” a critically acclaimed best-seller that covered similar ground - but never in such a unique way. “The Invisibles,” a German film, tells the story of four of these real-life Jews who hid from their oppressors in everyday Berlin society. What they didn’t know was that approximately 7,000 Jews remained in hiding in the city, and not only in attics and basements - often in plain sight. ( JTA) - In May 1943, after years of killings and deportations, the Nazis declared Berlin “judenfrei,” or free of Jews.

The invisibles movie