We Were So Beloved

This is a surprisingly honest but overly long dialogue with survivors of the Jewish Holocaust living in the Washington Heights area of New York City. Director Manfred Kirchheimer belongs to that community, a useful inroad that facilitates the openness in the elderly people he interviews. Supplementing their controversial testimony is archival footage on the Nazi's rise to power. The Jews interviewed here express viewpoints that are not generally acknowledged out loud. For example, the disdain that these German Jews have for Polish Jews cannot be disguised. Next, those interviewed cannot believe their immediate fellow Germans would ever have done anything against them and attribute the Holocaust to more distant unknowns -- even to the point of excusing accusatory behavior among their so-called friends. Finally, other points also highlight the fact that German Jews were not only Jewish, they were German.