KISSES TO THE CHILDREN a documentary film by Vassilis Loules
And we were carefree again...
carefree, that is, until the day...
The Jews are deported.
We got some bad news one day: we were to be deported.
Five children who were saved from the Nazi hunt. A documentary of genius, a documentary of heartbreak (Yorgos Chronas / Poet, Writer)
I don't remember playing that time...
I couldn't play in the ghetto!
It is not just another film about the Holocaust. It's a film about the hollow terror and the exclusion these children experienced. (Hagen Fleischer / Professor of History)
We go into hiding.
I remember my mother ripping the star from the lapel of my coat...
and I set off.
I was so scared, I remember being so scared...
So we couldn't leave the island on a ferry...
Instead, we were smuggled off in a caique...
Jacob was 9 and Erber four and a half. I was ten and a half.
I began saying goodbye to all the family...
to my father, my mother...
and it was the last time I saw my aunts and my grandfather.
That was what absolute terror feels like...
the absolute terror that they've come for you.
And the girl got such a fright! "They'll catch her!", she thought...
"Take that little bastard, too. She's a Jew, too".
...until Mrs Phaedra appeared like a mirage before us…
in her blue-and-white suit.
That was the law of the Germans:
Anyone harbouring Jews would be sent to the firing squad!
KISSES TO THE CHILDREN brings back some of the values we must rediscover. Like those of solidarity and the comradeship that some people offered the Jews. (Vassilis Vassilikos / Writer)
That's what makes a person great!
We saw Germans passing by outside the window...
Yes, yes we could see them! Through the glass!
Very often at night, far from my parents and my whole world…
I'd cry myself to sleep...
And every night before I fell asleep, I'd shout: "Do you love me, Athena?"...
and "bring me a glass of water!"
Markos 8, Boulissa 7...
Samuel 3, Anna 1...
Perla 12...
8 Awards at Film Festivals (Audience Award, Best Direction Best Music, Best Documentary)
KISSES TO THE CHILDREN a documentary film by Vassilis Loules
