Historical Inaccuracies...
...or Hollywoodized?
It looks like some known facts need to be put out here, because in watching this movie some people have missed more than a few points.
This movie was based on a 1938 book by an Englishwoman, Phyllis Bottome, so it can’t be said that Hollywood ‘created’ it.
The two oldest sons of Prof. Viktor Roth, Otto von Rohn and Erich von Rohn, are identified at the beginning of this movie as his “STEP-SONS”. This occurred during breakfast when they each brought their “STEP-FATHER” a book, and presented them to him as birthday gifts. A very big deal was made by Viktor Roth when the gifts were presented, by him saying how glad his sons both loved him and “even though they were his step-sons” he had always thought of them as his own sons. The date, right then, was January 30, 1933, and is the exact same date that Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Now stop for a minute and go back and re-read the “STEP-SONS” names. If read too quickly, “Roth” and “Rohn” do look very similar. As a note, the daughters and youngest son’s names are: Freya Roth and Rudi Roth, respectively. In 1940 society it is immediately assumed that those two are Viktor Roth’s legitimate offspring.
Was anyone going to be safe from persecution by fleeing to Austria at that time? Yes, because, even though this movie was filmed in 1940 (Austria was under Nazi control by then) it took place entirely within 1933. A vivid example of this timeframe occurs when Amelie Roth visits Viktor at the concentration camp. I paused the playback just so I could read everything that was on the Prisoner Identification card held by the desk sergeant. It read: Name: Roth, Viktor, Born: January 30, 1873, Profession: Professor of Physiology, (and here’s an important one) Entered Camp: August 29, 1933, and it was stamped: Dept. is not interested in release of this prisoner.
We are so far away from the events that took place both here in America and Germany during those years. Finding someone who can give first-hand knowledge is now almost impossible, because they would have to be about 90 years old. Wait; before you criticize my math, I said “first-hand” knowledge, as in, someone that was old enough at the time to understand what was actually happening. Rudi Roth, at 15 didn’t understand what was happening. The rest of the family hid his father’s incarceration from him, and notice how proudly he sat at the dinner table to say that in school they were being taught the ways of the “new” Germany. And poor Rudi (if he wasn’t one yet, he soon would be), was of the age to be a “Hitler Youth.” Before Hitler was given dictatorial powers in the March, 1933 emergency elections, the Hitler youth only numbered around one hundred thousand. Afterwards, all youth organizations were forced to become Hitler Youth, such as “The Reich’s Committee of German Youth Association” of which its entire six million members were placed under the authority of the Hitler youth.
Since it’s almost impossible to get any first-hand accounts today, and since going to the library to get valid information isn’t likely to happen, please be careful of the “facts” you pluck off the internet. Always consider the source. There are webpages out there that say the holocaust didn’t happen and ones that say Hitler and Elvis are alive and well in Argentina.
The Few, But Proud, Then And Now