Customer Reviews

Rescuers: Stories of Courage - Two Women [VHS]

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Don't let a negative review discourage you from seeing this powerful made-for-TV drama. True, you won't see action-packed scenes of Ghetto uprisings or death-camp liberations. The courage demonstrated in this film is of the quieter, clandestine kind, but it is no less heroic! "Mamushka" is the story of Mickey, a little Jewish boy. His Polish (Ukrainian?) nanny, Gertruda, refuses to abandon her adoptive family when the Germans invade Poland. Educated and fluent in six languages, she accompanies the refugees to Russian-occupied Lithuania, and helps them survive. When the Holocaust overtakes Vilnius, Gertruda promises the dying mother she will raise Mickey as her own son. "You must call me 'Mamushka' from now on," she cautions the child, "and you must never let anyone see you naked. Jewish boys are different from other little boys." Mamushka makes a living translating German documents, and takes Mickey to daily Mass. But they endure the terror of SS troops storming their neighborhood. "What do you know about Jews?" a Nazi barks at Mickey while searching the apartment. Gertruda holds her breath. Wide-eyed with fear, the little boy whispers, "they're different..." Gertruda would risk her life many times during the next years, not only to save Mickey, but to smuggle food into the Ghetto. "Woman on a Bicycle" is the story of Rebecca, a young Frenchwoman. When her brother joins the Resistance, Rebecca becomes a messenger and smuggler. She is enlisted by her bishop to falsify documents for Jewish orphan children. Rebecca tries to conceal her dangerous work from her mother, until she rescues a Jewish couple who were injured making a desperate leap from a moving boxcar. Unquestioningly, her mother offers their home as a refuge. Both of these stories are true accounts of compassionate Catholics who risked death to save Jewish lives. In a time when even the Pope had sided with Hitler, these Christians had tremendous moral courage. Both Gertruda and Rebecca have been honored at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel. Please watch their inspiring stories; you'll remember them for a long time.

I was fortunate enought to purchase this video used. It is an inspiring story of how normal people can display courage in bad situations as opposed to the macho man with a gun type of heroism that Hollywood normally puts out. It reminds us that life can put us to the test and if we have loving hearts we to can be heros to someone.

I'd like to review it now,it's my first time

This movie is really terrible-- and if your purpose is to really see what happened during the Holocaust, you certainly don't want this movie. It's a chick flick-- and a bad one at that. I was wanting something to show my kids what the Holocaust was really like and some of the things that happened in the death camps, etc. (...) If you want to see something pretty good and that's tamer than Schindler's List, get Devil's Arithmetic.