EUROPA EUROPA [GerMAn tItLe: HITLERJUNGE SALOMON] 109
pulled without the aid of medi cation. Girls from the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM,
League of German Girls, the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth) serve meals at
the acad emy. BDM girl Leni ( Julie Delpy) becomes infatuated with Jupp and
strongly hints that she would happily bear Jupp’s child, but after she makes an
anti- Semitic remark he slaps her and they break up. Afterwards, while serving at
a factory to support the war effort, Jupp and his fellow students discover that the
Sixth Army has been destroyed at Sta lin grad. Solly decides to visit Leni’s mother
(Halina Labonarska) and tells her he’s Jewish but she does not betray him. When
she tells him Leni is pregnant, Solomon concludes that the father of the child is
one of his classmates, a friend named Gerd (Ashley Wanninger). Solomon’s cha-
rade as an “Aryan” German begins to crumble when he is summoned to Gestapo
offices and cannot produce a Certificate of Racial Purity. An ensuing investigation
will expose him, but just as he leaves the building, it is destroyed by Allied bombs,
killing Gerd in the bargain. As the Red Army closes in on Berlin, the Hitler Youth
at the school are sent to the front. Perel surrenders and tells his captors he’s a Jew
but they don’t believe that any Jew would have survived. They are about to have
Solomon shot when his brother Isaak, who has just left a concentration camp, stops
the shooting and saves his brother’s life. Solly soon moves to the British Mandate
of Palestine, the future state of Israel, and fi nally lives his Jewish heritage. The films
ends with a shot of the real Solomon Perel, who is now 65 years old, performing a
Jewish folk song (“Hine Ma Tov,” Psalm 133:1).
Reception
Europa Europa had its Eu ro pean premiere in Paris on 14 November 1990 and simul-
taneous East and West Coast American openings in New York City and in Seattle
on 28 June 1991. Well received in the United States, the movie garnered good
reviews, received a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and
grossed $5.6 million at the box office: respectable returns for a subtitled foreign
film on a downbeat topic. American Jewish associations and concentration camp
survivors also praised the film. Europa Europa’s reception in Germany was another
matter entirely, however. A comic- absurd picaresque journey through the Holo-
caust that featured an amoral protagonist who survives through deception, collab-
oration, and pure luck, the movie went against postwar Germany’s lofty moral
protocols regarding Jewish victimhood and national guilt. In the words of film
scholar Lawrence Baron, “Europa Europa’s multicultural message, multinational ori-
gins, and discomforting synthesis of comic, sensual, and violent ele ments hurt its
reception in the newly reunified Germany” (Baron, 2005, pp. 87–88). To add insult
to critical opprobrium and dismal box office returns, the German Export Film
Union deci ded not to submit Europa Europa for Oscar consideration as Best Foreign
Film. The snub provoked a protest letter signed by Germany’s leading filmmakers,
including Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot), and
Michael Verhoeven (The Nasty Girl). More alarmingly, Claude Lanzmann, maker of
the acclaimed Holocaust documentary Shoah (1985), denounced Holland as an
anti- Semite, even though the Nazi death camps claimed both of her Jewish father’s
parents (her mother was Catholic). Holland defended herself, saying, “I re spect