Defiance

Not light and fluffy escapist entertainment, but Defiance is a movie worth seeing. Based on the true story of four brothers hiding from the Nazis with 1200 other Jews in the Belarussian woods, it pays homage to hope, faith, and the strength of the human spirit. It also shows human nature at its very best, and its absolute worst.

The group of Jews who find each other over time build a community. Every person is assigned work, and everyone gets the same rations. People fall in love, people grumble about being hungry and having to work, people become sick and die. The Germans manage to find them, and so they must once again leave everything they have and run to a new spot to begin all over again. (Imagine doing that with 1200 people!) Food must be taken from local farmers, but they are careful to not visit one farmer more than others, or to take from people who cannot spare what they have. They build simple log huts, and trade labour with Russian partisans for food and medicine. Despite all they had endured before having to hide in the forest, they manage to maintain hope and rebuild again and again and establish a semblance of 'normal' life.

It is not an idyllic or romantic life, however. When times are especially challenging, many begin to wish they were back in the ghetto, and at one point they pray for God to remove His favour from them, to find another nation to bless. One person asks why it is so hard to be friends with a Jew; the answer he gets is: try being one.

We learn at the end of the film that the children and grandchildren of the survivors now number in the hundreds of thousands. What a legacy those four brothers have.