Bye Bye Germany

Audience Reviews

View More

Dick C @Joshua19930826 03/30/2022 This motion picture, Bye Bye Germany, in German: Es war einmal in Deutschland, 2017 is a dark film especially the leading actor, Moritz Bleibtreu who impresses me a lot by the movie, Run Lola Run 1998... See more 04/11/2020 It's not easy to do comedy about the Holocaust, but this film pulls it off while sending a powerful message See more mauro l @Mauro_Lanari 02/07/2019 A dramedy about the Jews who survived the Shoah. The Jews did not like it and I respect their judgment. (Mauro Lanari) See more 09/21/2018 This is a great film from Germany about the immediate postwar period in West Germany, 1946, when Jews were trying to find the ways and means to leave the country for the US and Palestine. They needed over $20,000 to successfully emigrate to the US. Five or so band together under the leadership of David Bermann, before the Nazi rule an owner of a linen store, to sell linen to the Germans. The first part of the movie has many funny episodes of these men using various techniques to get the Germans to buy their wares. Throughout the film we learn the stories of each of these men, and especially David's story. The occupying Americans were investigating evidence that he had collaborated with the Nazis to get a better life while imprisoned at a concentration camp. He meets with the interrogator, Special Agent Sara Simon (herself a German Jew who had emigrated to the US just after the Nazi take over in 1933). The evidence stacks up, and we see flashbacks to his time in the camp. Much of his story appears suspicious, and Simon doesn't believe him. I found the movie compelling to watch. It is very well written and acted, and was a very gripping account of something most of us are ignorant of: life in the largely destroyed (by war) nation of Germany, the lingering antisemitism of many Germans ("You can say what you want about the Jews, but they are the best doctors." That kind of thing. Very illuminating and entertaining. See more 07/18/2018 It's 1946 and post-war Frankfurt, Germany is in shambles, with hundreds of thousands of Jews and others who survived the Holocaust living in U.S. Displaced Persons Camps, waiting to get licenses to come to Palestine or America. One such person is David Bermann, portrayed by the fine actor Moritz Bliebtreu, whose family was wiped out in the concentration camps. He gathers together some fellow survivors to form a linen business to raise enough money for their emigration. Meanwhile, he is being investigated by a U.S. Army Special Agent, played by the striking German actress Antje Traue, as a possible Nazi collaborator. As this original movie progresses, the filmmakers are able, for the most part, to deftly combine humor, tragedy, camaraderie, and even some pulls of the heartstrings. Not everything works here, and as another reviewer mentioned, not everything is answered, but there's enough here to make for an interesting and engaging film, as I see it. See more 11/26/2017 A Holocaust movie set in that interesting immediate post-war period when there were DP camps and German Jews trying to get out of Germany. The central situation is compelling, and the acting is good, but there are many plot devices that were poorly thought out or cliché. You never really know whether the comedian was telling the truth about what he did during the war, and that's O.K. See more Read all reviews

Bye Bye Germany

My Rating

Read More Read Less WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW POST RATING