Bye Bye Germany

It's 1946 and post-war Frankfurt, Germany is in shambles, with hundreds of thousands of Jews and other survivors of 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, whose entire family was wiped out in the concentration camps, and who now is focused on gathering together other survivors to make enough money in a small linen business so they can successfully afford to emigrate. However, he's also under investigation by a U.S. Special Agent, portrayed by the striking German actress Antje Traue, for being a possible Nazi collaborator.

This movie, for the most part, deftly combines humor, tragedy, camaraderie, and survivors guilt, into what I thought was quite an original presentation. However, not everything works, questions remain unanswered, and the film, at times, seems to lose its dramatic effect.

Overall, though, I still found the movie to be mostly interesting and engaging despite its drawbacks.

Es war einmal en Deutschland (2017) (also called Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland) was shown in the U.S. with the title Bye Bye Germany. It was co-written and directed by Sam Garbarski.

The movie stars Moritz Bleibtreu as David Bermann, who survived the Holocaust by telling jokes so funny that even the Nazi officers laughed. He has elected to stay in Germany after the war, using cunning and sales experience to get rich.

The lovely Antje Traue co-stars as a U.S. intelligence officer, who has the task of finding Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. This whole aspect of the film doesn't work. It just isn't realistic to expect the officer to spend hour after hour with Bermann. However, director Gabaski uses this device to illustrate what happened to Bermann in the concentration camp. When Bermann defends himself, we see flashbacks of what really took place.

I'm not familiar with Moritz Bleibtrau's work, but he is a consummate actor. It's worth watching the film to see a true professional bringing a role to life. The supporting cast is excellent, and the movie is very skillfully crafted.

We saw this film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum. It was screened as part of the excellent Rochester Jewish Film Festival. It will work well on DVD. The film has a very weak IMDb rating of 6.5. I'm not sure why it has the low rating. It's much better than that.

I don't understand why so many low ratings. The movie has a great casting with a moving plot line that is more sad than comedy but touches you. A classic german movie I would say.

Es war einmal in Deutschland … (Once upon in Germany, not Bye Bye Germany) is a brilliant movie set in Germany in 1946, right after all the atrocities that Germany committed. I really think that Germany forgot really fast the Holocaust and its gas chambers, and now the country is considered a modern and Eco-friendly country, but let's not forget that 75 years ago the whole country supported happily the humiliation and deportation of millions of people, the mass killings, and the gassing of men, women, and children (for the guilt and responsibility of the German common people in the Holocaust please read Yehuda Bauer's "Rethinking the Holocaust"). For that, I never understood why there are hardly any films about the Holocaust made in Germany, when, considering the magnitude of the tragedy, Germany should be doing 1 movie a day about the Holocaust (until reaching the 11 million). The really good German-speaking films critical movies about the Holocaust are actually not German: Die Fälscher (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2007) is Austrian, Berlin'36 (Kaspar Heidelbach, 2009) is also Austrian, and the director of Es war einmal in Deutschland … (Sam Garbarski) was born in Germany but he is actually Belgian.

Es war einmal in Deutschland … is a funny, sad, and moving film that will make you laugh and cry. I don't think that here in Spain (I live in Madrid) the public really got the movie. If you don't know what a "Kapo" was, or what was happening at "the ramp" in Auschwitz (the majority of the Spanish public hardy know anything about the Holocaust) or what "Lechaim" means, you are going to miss some good points about the movie and some very good Jewish black humour.

The music of the film (composed by Renaud Garcia-Fons) is really beautiful. The cinematography (Virginie Saint-Martin), too.

The cast is absolutely AMAZING. Everybody is shining. Moritz Bleibtreu (Knockin' on Heaven's Door)'s performance is superb. And Anatole Taubman, Tim Seyfi, Mark Ivanir (Schindler's List), Antje Traue (Woman in Gold) are amazing too.

Go and see this movie today! You will learn some new things about the Holocaust, the biggest crime against Humanity. 10/10

It is unfortunate that the English title is crass by comparison to the loaded meaning in the original German.

"Once upon a time" is an introduction to a story and to story telling and this is film is rich in the varieties of tales and the truths of stories. It's not quite 'Rashomon' but it does engage similar themes.

The film is well made and excellently acted with a high quality script; it offers the actors strong material and lots of shades of intention. The story takes a different angle to post war chaos and the desire for a new life after the destruction, all the while in the shadow of the ruins and the memories of those that perished.

The flow of the film keeps the attention as it bends and reveals more about the characters. The humor is mordant and expresses how people deflect pain through jokes. The leads could not be better.

It deserves attention and rewards the viewer's time.