The reason I enjoy World War II movies involving the Germans is because my dad helped fight the Nazis, as a radar station commander. He’s still alive now, though at 92 he doesn’t remember much, which may be a merciful thing. His unit stumbled on Buchenwald just after the Germans left but while there were still inmates in the concentration camp. For the longest time my dad didn’t even talk about the experience. Years later, he was willing, but only to speak to groups of school children to help verify, as an eyewitness, that yes, the Holocaust really happened.
This film is but one small aspect of it. There were only a few families hiding “in darkness” during the occupation, because most of the rest had either been scattered, executed, sent to the camps or become part of the countless multitudes just lost to the epic struggle. Yes, the Germans slaughtered millions. And so did the Russians. The irony here is that the Russians are seen as the liberators. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, but that’s another story.
As far as this film goes, it’s terribly dark, in many ways. Since much of the footage takes place underground, the scenes are suitably obscure, and the place looks like it must reek. The people are slimy and depressed and beaten down, emotionally. They have little food and no assurance of safety. This Mr. Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) is taking great risks by bringing them anything, and he, in turn, is pressured by his wife, and the few friends who know, to not put himself at risk like this (the same dilemma that Schindler faced). Besides, the supposed Aryans were already happily dividing the vacated assets of the deported Jews, anyway – who was there even to stand up for now? And what would that accomplish, other than to bring calamity down on the survivors?
But Leopold got to know “his Jews” personally: the woman who was pregnant by a man who was already missing, and presumed dead; the two little children whom he found wandering around, lost; the old man who tried to pay him by telling him where his “secret stash” of jewelry was buried in a cemetery. Leopold also had a friend in the occupation forces, a Ukrainian, so he really was living a lie with everyone, which, of course, took a toll on him as well.
Ironically, the “real-life” Leopold Socha didn’t survive the war, but some of the “sewer refugees” did, including one of the children who wound up writing about it later. In a way, it’s only a small piece of the horrific things going on all around them (yes, the labor camps, but also the pogroms, and the battles, and the POW camps, and the starving refugees…..with 50 million casualties worldwide, the totality of the tragedy defies understanding). All the Germans here are caricatures. Though we briefly visit a nearby concentration camp, we see nothing of the wider picture of what’s happening in the conduct of the war. We’re just down in the sewer for what seems to be eternity. Hell without the traditional fire.
No, it’s never cute and charming and endearing. It’s about broken and broken-down people stuck in a dank prison with little prospect of rescue or escape. But “In Darkness” is powerful. And it will leave an imprint.
Ronald P. Salfen is interim pastor of St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church in Irving, Texas.
