Steal a Pencil for Me
May 2008 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This documentary narrates the Nazi occupation of Holland and the deportation of Dutch Jews to concentration camps. The story focuses on an unusual trio of Jews: a man, his wife, and another woman with whom he had begun a romance just before the Nazis invaded. The three of them, Jack and Manja Polack and Ina Soep, are deported to a "model camp" called Westerbork. The Nazis used this camp as a showcase, actually filming it, to deceive the outer world. Prisoners had sufficient food, a playing field, a school for children, even camp entertainers and a symphony orchestra. And here the secret romance between Jack and Ina flourished as they strolled the grounds together after dark. Jack and Manja had had a troubled marriage before deportation yet agreed to stay together until after the war. When Manja discovered their romance, she objected and drove it underground. Jack and Ina began an extraordinary exchange of love letters that continued after they were all transferred to the dreaded Bergen-Belsen and on until the war’s end.

Starvation, forced labor, exhaustion, and typhus were Jack’s lot at Bergen-Belsen, but Ina, as the daughter of a diamond broker, received better treatment. Earlier, at the last minute, her father had somehow managed to get Ina’s transfer to the death camp Auschwitz switched to Bergen-Belsen. All the Jews who had been in the diamond trade were commandeered by the Nazis to teach them the business. And so Ina was brought in to take shorthand. Hence, the film’s title, "Steal a Pencil for Me," Jack’s request in a letter. In April, 1945, the Nazis, expecting the Allies’ arrival, began shipping prisoners out. Jack was deathly ill and starving, down to some 70 pounds, and Ina almost died of typhus before their liberation by the Allies.

They were reunited in Holland and married after Jack’s divorce from Manja. All of Jack’s letters to Ina survived, but only 14 of hers to him. These letters were translated and published years later by their daughter, and many are read aloud in the film. The letters are interspersed with vintage black-and-white newsreels of the Nazi occupation, the deportation, the bombing of Holland, and horrific scenes from Bergen-Belsen. (Especially interesting are scenes of the cabaret entertainers at the model camp Westerbork.) Much of the film, though, is in the present. We see the elderly Polaks out strolling again, active and happy, preparing for their 60th wedding anniversary, with their family and friends around them. Jack is particularly gregarious, stopping families on the street or visiting schools to talk about the Holocaust.

The film is well edited, integrating a variety of media and switching coherently between present and past. The original score is uplifting. Audio is plenty clear. It is yet another competent and engaging addition to the Holocaust genre.

"Never to forget" is the purpose for producing another Holocaust film. What would be most welcome at this point in our history, though, is a documentary that examines the historical Holocaust and its connections to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

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