Sweet Mud (Adama Meshugaat)

This much acclaimed film about a small boy's view of kibbutz life in Israel in the the 1950's presents a very personal, controversial and, some would say, extreme view of the mores of kibbutz life.

(to be continued)

Beaufort - a film about the Israeli army in Lebanon

Joesph Cedar's film takes place in the cramped and frightening bunkers of a remote Israeli army outpost on the site of a Crusader castle in southern Lebanon in the year 2000, a few months before the Israeli evacuation of southern Lebanon.

According to the Wikipedia article, this 700metre high outpost was used from 1976 by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation for firing rockets into Israel. Beaufort was captured by the Israeli army in a bloody battle and was held by the Israelis until the Israeli pullout in 2000. During the 1990's the army outpost came under increasing attack by the Hezbollah and the film shows the tension and despair felt by the Israeli soldiers in defending a position in a futile and bloody conflict.

The film is well made, sensitive accurately represents the life style of Israeli soldiers in outposts in hostile territory. It raises many of the dilemmas of war but without taking sides and forcing the viewer to figure it out for him/herself. Disturbing for those of us involved in Israeli existence and the fight for survival, but definitely reccommended.

Reviews:
Alertnet and Variety


Reviews

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian

I don't usually read novels but the title of this book (together with a drawing of an Ukranian tractor on the cover) was too much for me to pass by.

It tells the story of first and second generation Ukrainian exiles in British town - an elderly, lonely widowed father whose heart is still very much in the "old country" and his two feuding daughters. The book has much humour and amusing insights into the seam between British middle-class provincial society and the world of refugees in the New Europe. Nikolai (the father) falls in love (or so he thinks) with a busty Ukranian , Valentina, who seeks a better life in the UK for herself and her son Stanislav. Nadezhada, one of the daughters (in whose first person the book is written) is appalled , detests the potential stepmother and only finds sympathy for her after the marriage breaks down. An entertaining read.

Book "Weeds like Us"

"Weeds Like Us" is a personal memoir written by a German-American by the name of Gunter Nitsch who grew up under the Nazi regime in East Prussia, the easternmost province of the then German Reich. Gunter was born in 1937 and this memoir is of his memories as a boy during the tumultuous period from Summer 1944 until 1950. In the final phases of World War 2 the Soviet Army captured East Prussia and most of the 2 million Germans who lived there tried to flee to Germany from the advancing Russian troops. Some 800,000 suceeded and according to Nitsch, 400-500,000 died in the fighting and the attempts to flee and 800,000 remained stranded in Russian-held territory once the fighting stopped. Nitsch, his mother and grandmother were amongst those East Prussian Germans who were caught in East Prussia and scraped by with great difficulty until they were repatriated to Germany in 1948. Most of the book deals with these difficult years and chronicles their existence as refugees in Germany thereafter.

Gunter Nitsch is not a professional author but it is a gripping and touching personal story of survival under very difficult circumstances. Until recent years it was not considered bon ton outside Germany (and often not even within Germany) to relate to the suffering of ordinary Germans during and after World War 2. The prevailing feeling in the Western world was that the Germans, by electing and supporting Hitler, had brought their tragedy upon themselves and deserved the cruel fate they suffered when their country, regime and aspirations collapsed. German cities were bombed mercilessly by the Allies, over a million German civilians died and some 10 million Germans from the former eastern provinces of Germany became refugees. Some settled in East and some in West Germany and had to rebuild their lives. Alongside the difficulty of the rehabilitation of Germany after the War, these refugees were probably at the bottom of the pile.

All war is a terrible thing and World War 2 with 6 millions Jews slaughtered and 20 million Russians who died was devastating. It's too easy for us to say who was right and who was wrong - we tend to overlook the personal tragedies on the losers' side. This book fills a vacuum. And for anyone who thinks I am being soft on the "hated" Germans, please note that I am Jewish, my mother's family was also from East Prussia and my East Prussian grandmother perished in the Holocaust.