Director: Janina Quint
Today, Europe's fastest growing Jewish population is in Berlin. Germany is considered one of the most democratic societies in the world, assuming the position of moral leader of Europe as they embrace hundreds of thousands of refugees. Through hard work, grassroots action, and productive confrontation of the moral responsibilities of democratic citizenship, the German people have given Hitler his greatest defeat.
Through personal stories, Germans & Jews explores Germany's transformation as a society, from silence about the Holocaust to facing it head on. Unexpectedly, a nuanced story of reconciliation emerges. What began as a private conversation between the two filmmakers and friends, Tal Recanati (Jewish) and Janina Quint (non-Jewish German), grew into a cultural exchange among many. Sitting in on a dinner party of the Germans and Jews featured in the film, we see a people whose lives are inextricably linked through the memory of the Holocaust. What does it mean to take responsibility for the past? How can we do it? The scholars, intellectuals, and citizens in this film are diligently and actively seeking thoughtful and honest answers.
This is a lesson in modern history, as well as a measured study in the most radically successful example of social and cultural reconciliation in modern times. Watch and learn how tolerant and thoughtful confrontation of the past can radically re-form the social fabric of the present and create a shared vision for a united and enlightened future. Great mechanisms of democracy - the school classrooms, public discourse, public art - are productively at work. As movements in the United States such as Black Lives Matter shed light on persisting racial injustice and the deep trauma of unresolved conflict, those who want to imagine what it would look like to successfully encounter the legacy of white privilege can look to Germans & Jews as an essential roadmap to meaningful progress.
Germans & Jews is at once uncomfortable and provocative, unexpected and enlightening.
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