Tags archives: Ruth Arndt

  • Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment There have been many worthwhile films about the World World II Holocaust and its survivors. Though it seems as though every angle has been covered, The Invisibles, a riveting docudrama by German filmmaker Claus Ráfle, is an unusually compelling new addition to the genre. Goebbels declared Berlin free of Jews in 1943 (the city originally numbered 160,000); however, out of the 7000 who resisted deportation and remained, 1500 were left by the war’s end. The Invisibles follows four young Berliners, as they individually defy the Nazi mandate to evacuate via deportation, choosing instead to wait out the war as veritable fugitives in their own city. Cioma Schönhaus, Hanni Lévy, Ruth Arndt and Eugen Friede are skillfully portrayed by actors in their youth and appear as themselves discussing their experiences decades later. Ráfle smoothly weaves their individual stories together, creating a movie that plays like a spy thriller as the protagonists face mounting danger from Nazis and, ironically, Allied bombs and invasion, while finding help from various heroic resistors. Though their plights are obviously similar, the four had different experiences marked by a shared characteristic: a sort of youthful fearlessness and resourcefulness, combined with a fierce will to survive. Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment In 1942 Schönhaus (Max Mauff), a somewhat cocky, 20-year-old art student, is separated from his parents [...]