Kurpfalz News

Excursion to the cinema in Mannheim

Kurpfalz Boarding School: High School & Secondary School Kurpfalz News Excursion to the cinema in Mannheim

At the end of May, the 9th grade of the Kurpfalz boarding school undertook an excursion to Mannheim. There she participated in a film event that took place on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. The students had the opportunity to watch the documentary “Black Sugar, Red Blood” by Luigi Toscano, a photographer and filmmaker from Mannheim.

Toscano embarks on an impressive quest in his work to find survivors of Nazi crimes, documenting their stories and making them accessible to a wide audience.

The main goal of the event was to raise awareness of the history and crimes of National Socialism and to focus on the theme “Against Forgetting.” The moving film is about the Ukrainian Anna Strishkowa, who survived Auschwitz as a small child. She was adopted after the liberation of the concentration camp, has few memories of her life before Auschwitz, and lives with uncertainty about her past.

Luigi Toscano takes on the challenge of reconstructing Anna’s life story and finding her family. However, he is constantly faced with various difficulties, as numerous documents from that time were destroyed. The search for the truth about the number tattooed on Anna’s arm in Auschwitz, which can only be seen in a Soviet propaganda film, is particularly complicated. This number represents the only clue, yet it was removed from her arm as a child. Furthermore, the exploration of their history is complicated by the ongoing war in Ukraine, which is repeatedly addressed in the film.

The students of class 9 were impressed by the story of the eyewitness Anna. Many of the young people expressed that they consider the significance of such documentaries “Against Forgetting” to be important. In light of the fact that many eyewitnesses have already passed away, the urgency to preserve knowledge of the past has become particularly evident. Overall, the excursion to Mannheim provided an inspiration for today’s generation to continue remembering the crimes of National Socialism. This experience highlights how important it is to hear and pass on the stories of the survivors.