Maria (Corinna Harfouch), a rising theater star in Nazi Germany, is in love with Mark (André Hennicke), a Jewish actor.
Presented here are nine short films that feature: film director Slatan Dudow; actor Martin Brandt; authors Erich Fried, Erich Weinert, and Arnold Zweig; photographer Walter Ballhause; cartoonist Leo Haas; and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch.
Dr. Blum, a Jewish manufacturer, is falsely accused of a murder. Even when the real killer’s identity becomes evident, the state prosecutor refuses to accept Blum’s innocence.
The chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Eventually, he adopts political neutrality and closes his eyes to the fact that the poison being produced in his factory is being used in the extermination camps.
May 8, 1945: WWII is over. Dresden is in ruins. But where are the 2200 paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Rubens, Giorgione, and Vermeer van Delft from the Old Masters Picture Gallery?
In a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland in 1944, Jacob Heym is summoned to the police station.
Berlin, early 1930s. Lissy (Sonja Sutter), a young woman raised in a socialist working-class family, marries a clerk who promises her a better life. During the depression, however, he gets fired and can’t find a new job.
August 24, 1937: a day in the life of expressionist sculptor and author Ernst Barlach (Fred Düren). Barlach lives in the small town of Güstrow, keeping to himself and wanting to steer clear of politics.
The film spans a ten-year period starting in 1933. Celebrated German film and theater actor Hans Wieland marries the Jewish actress Elisabeth Maurer. As Nazi anti-Semitic policies increasingly infringe on their lives, they struggle to survive.
In 1945, the artist Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef) returns to Berlin after spending three years in a concentration camp. Yet amid the ruins, she is filled with a renewed energy for life. When she arrives at her old apartment, she finds that Dr.