VARIOUS FILE: Jewish Holocaust survivor Marga Spiegel and German actress Veronica Ferres visit Yad Vashem

Record ID: 395846

  • Title: VARIOUS FILE: Jewish Holocaust survivor Marga Spiegel and German actress Veronica Ferres visit Yad Vashem
  • Date: 3rd October 2009
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (German) ACTRESS VERONICA FERRES WHO PLAYS JEWISH SURVIVOR MARGA SPIEGEL, SAYING "A woman of her background, of her education, had to move naturally among pig dung and milking the cows, just like any other farmer, in order not be found out. This duplicity, and always to be withdrawn, overcoming one's fears and not letting hope die. They never know if it would end well or not, they did not know if it would go on for years or decades. She did not know if she would ever see her husband again. This withdrawing but still being present was a big challenge for me as an actress and it was a great responsibility, as well, to hold Marga's life in my hands." (SOUNDBITE) (German) JEWISH SURVIVOR MARGA SPIEGEL, SAYING "It was a miracle for those days when everyone was everyone's enemy. Take the woman who recognized me: They had a pub, and there were always copious amounts of alcohol and a lot of talk with it. She never said anything. It would have been so easy, she did not want to blow the whistle on me, but all she would have needed to say was, I saw Frau Spiegel today. She never did. That is a miracle. I was so scared all the time that she would just say it accidentally. She never did. I visited her after the war and she said it was matter of course. So there were people like that- that is why one can never say "all Germans"
  • Embargoed: 18th October 2009 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA8OI9NHGP5NXLP5HEO4DPM6A3L
  • Story Text: Jewish survivor Marga Spiegel and German actress Veronica Ferres who plays her in a movie about her survival story visited Israel's holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Thursday (October 1).
    In "Saviors In the Night", Ferres plays Spiegel, who lived among farmers who hid her in Western Germany during World War II, thus saving her and her little daughter from deportation.
    "I feel like being a vehicle for the heroes who showed that it was possible to have courage. It was not impossible - what they taught us in school. It was possible to be courageous and to save lives" said Ferres during her visit to Yad Vashem with Spiegel and crew and cast members.
    Director Ludi Boeken added: "The film is an exceptional story because it is in Germany, where Germans, loyal Germans, take in German Jews against all odds, and without even thinking about the risk. They were all risking their lives. They could have all been shot. Their children could have been taken away from them - their farms, everything, their life - and they did it without even asking themselves, probably, why? They just did it out of humanity."
    Saviors In the Night is based on the memories of Marga Spiegel. In her narrative, published in 1965, she describes how courageous farmers in southern Muensterland hid her, her husband Siegfried (nicknamed "Menne") and their little daughter Karin from 1943 until 1945, and saved them from deportation to the extermination camps in the East. The film tells this story of survival with a sense for the absurd in daily life and not without some typical local humour.
    "One does not write about this kind of thing like you write about things or a journey" Spiegel told Reuters about her writing experience. "Because writing about it brings up the memories again, things you had to forget in order to live on. You cannot live with this complex, it would not be a life, one would have become depressed or something. There was no option."
    Without reservation, the farmers offered the refugees their protection. It would never have occured to them that this turned them into heroes. They are used to weathering even dangerous situations somehow, guided only by their instinct and century-old code of ethics. They risk their own lives, and, if necessary, even that of their families. There is never a discussion about friendship, reliability, humanity.
    In Yad Vashem the farmers' names are immortalized: Heinrich Aschoff, Hubert Pentrop, Bernhard Suedfeld, Heinrich Silkenboehmer, Bernhard Sickmann.
    Ferres and Spiegel grew close during preparation and production of "Saviors".
    To Ferres, playing a historic figure who is still alive, proved a challenge: "A woman of her background, of her education had to move naturally among pig dung and milking the cows, just like any other farmer, in order not be found out. ... She did not know if she would ever see her husband again. This withdrawal but still being present was a big challenge for me as an actress and it was a great responsibility, as well, to hold Marga's life in my hands" Ferres remembered, adding: "She is a unique personality, she is 97 years old, she is very wise, she is funny, she is beautiful. And she enriched my life very, very much."
    Spiegel says her and Ferres developed a close friendship that is still going strong: "We have such a great relationship. I don't like the word pride, but I am grateful that we continue to be in touch and grateful to each other. I have no birthday I don't invite her to, no celebration. Naturally she came to my daughter's wedding. It is a blessing for me having been able to meet such wonderful people."
    The film boasts fine performances and is all the more persuasive because it underplays the dogged strength and loyalty of the rural Germans who reject the merciless extremism of dictatorship and put themselves at grave risk. Even at the end of the war, with the light of freedom about to bring relief, extraordinary tension remains because of the threat of vengeful cowards, freed war prisoners who go on the rampage, and even the liberating Allied forces who could not tell a good German from a bad one.
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