Brazilian Movies: Olga - Film on German Jew given to Hitler opens eyes in Brazil

Six decades after she was “given” to Hitler as a gift by Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas, Brazilians are being introduced to Olga Benario.

Based on the best seller of the same title by Fernando Morais, “Olga” has become one of the most popular films of the year in Brazil.

The 400.000 people who saw the film over its opening weekend in theaters earlier this year made it the most-watched Brazilian film in 2004; by its second week more than 1 million people had seen the movie about Benario, who died in a Nazi gas chamber in 1942.

The Brazilian Ministry of Culture recently chose “Olga” as the country’s entry in the 2005 Oscar race for foreign film.

Benario was born in a Jewish family in Munich, Germany, in 1908, and joined the Communist Youth Organization at the age of 15. In 1934, she was entrusted with guaranteeing the safe return of communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes to Brazil. While posing as husband and wife, the pair fell in love.

After the failure of the communist revolution the next year, Benario and Prestes were arrested and separated. As an act of personal vengeance against Prestes, Vargas had Benario, seven months pregnant, deported to Nazi Germany.

On arrival she was taken to a Gestapo women’s prison. On Nov. 27, 1936, exactly one year after the failed revolution, Anita Leocadia was born.

In 1938, Benario was deported to a Nazi concentration camp, and killed in 1942.

The movie was screened at Sao Paulo’s 2,000-family Congregacao Israelita Paulista, Brazil’s largest Jewish congregation. For its rabbi, Henry Sobel, “The message of Olga Benario’s story is more important for Brazilian non-Jews than it is for Jews.”

Official Website - http://olgaofilme.globo.com/

posted by nscafuro @ 2:05 PM