Movie and Matura

Yesterday, all the students and teachers watched a movie called "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (and fyi it's pYjamas here in England-town). It's a tragic story about a pair of boys who become victims of the Holocaust.

It may be ironic but I'm grateful that the Nazis are only appearing at the end of my time here. We discussed a movie called "Der Mühlviertel Hasenjagd", which roughly translates into "the Mühlviertel rabbit hunt". It tells the escape of prisoners, mainly Russians, from a concentration camp in Upper Austria. Local citizens were told that a group of criminals had escaped and that they were to be caught dead or alive. This lead to the violent and deadly "hunt" of the escapees about the Austrian countryside.

Austria has been in the news lately because of several events involving the dreaded National Socialists. A group of Austrian students visited Auschwitz, the most well-known and deadly extermination camp of WWII, to be kicked out a short time later for Nazi references or spreading Nazi propaganda. Then, a few weeks later, a group of young Neo-Nazis disrupted a commemorative ceremony by waving fake guns and bullying the participants. Come now, children, can't we play nice?