Review of Steal a Pencil for Me (2007) by Richard S — 25 Feb 2012

A believable and deeply touching story of an unimaginable romance that happened in Holland in World War II and bloomed in the horrible camps at Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen. Two Dutch Jews, Jaap Polak and Ina Soep, did what young lovers do, in a sadly minimum way while they endured the terrors of the camps and struggled to stay alive.

Their final escape from Bergen-Belsen, on separate trains bound in opposite directions, kept them apart only for a few desperate months. In this deliberately understated film, they dance at their 60th wedding anniversary and recount only as much of their experience as we would want-they maintain some privacy, while celebrating their love over so many years.

The best moments for me were in a scene with school children on a family outing at a WWII camp location that remains as a memorial to the dead. Jaap talks plainly to the kids who stand listening, mutely attentive to the old man and perhaps unable to fully grasp the meaning of his words.

A mother uses the moment to remind her children that "this man is Jewish, but he is no different from us." Jaap and Ina are old, and they are Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, and they are happy now.

I don't want to be different from them.