HABERMANN

SYNOPSIS

While most of our films leave the audience with a sense of happiness and satisfaction, we also have films that stir other emotions. Films that deal with tough historical subjects that are intellectually stimulating and educational, though sombering. Habermann is one such film. The true events that inspired the director, a holocaust survivor, to make this film are seldom visited by Americans. However, this piece of history is just as likely as any other to repeat itself if the lessons on human nature it offers are not understood.

Habermann is a stimulating film that raises awareness of a post World War II event that must never be forgotten – the brutal and horrific expulsion of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland and other parts of Eastern Europe. A result of the resentment against Germans as Nazi sympathizers that are responsible for the war, millions of Germans that had been peacefully co-existing alongside Czechs were stripped of their land and possessions and forced in mass exodus back to German soil. Most of them were tortured, many were murdered; whether they had anything to do with the Nazis or not.

Based on the true story of August Habermann, a wealthy mill owner interested in neither politics nor ideology, the film portrays a brave man in his attempt to hold together his family and community as he is manipulated by malicious forces beyond his comprehension.