Documentary: Ingelore
Synopsis here
Ingelore is a 40 minute documentary currently showing on HBO On Demand. I watched it the other day and was rivoted.
Ingelore was born in 1924 in Germany. She was born deaf and is Jewish.
The format of the documentary is that Ingelore narrates her own story. The movie contains images of the elderly Ingelore telling the story using her voice and sign language. It flashes back to images and dramatizations of the story being told. We are shown photographs from her life and near the end we see Ingelore with her family sharing Passover dinner. It also shows the elderly Ingelore traveling back to her hometown in Germany after about 60 years of absence and stories are told as she goes around town seeing the sights.
The story unfolds discussing what it is like to live in Germany in the early 1900s as a deaf girl. Then, Hitler comes into power and Ingelore's Jewish family is affected. The story tells of how they were able to flee Germany for the United States of America and tells a bit of the good life that Ingelore found living in the freedom that America offers.
The film was moving and I was rivoted the whole time.
I plan on having my sons watch this film. Everyone should see and hear stories like this that bring history to life and tell what it was like to live through atrocious things. This helps us feel empathy toward others and get a much better sense for what the world is like instead of hearing scrubbed clean versions in school textbooks.
Spoiler alert and content advisory!
This story containst the telling of rape by two Nazi soldiers of the teenaged Ingelore who then becomes pregnant and winds up having an abortion from a private medical doctor in the USA. This is real life. I do not hesistate to let my sons see this.
Regarding abortion: my kids already know what abortion is and we have discussed our family values about it. This is another opportunity to talk about it again and this time regarding victims of rape.
Regarding rape: I think that it is good for them to see what rape is really about instead of hearing it joked about or treated casually by their peers.
If you didn't know elementary and middle school kids make jokes about rape and say things like "I'm going to rape you!" and one school had an issue with elementary kids playing Rape Tag where you unfreeze someone by humping them from behind.
I have a feeling that kids don't really have any empathy or feelings about real rape and therefore use the term rape where may be the word sex or a word to mean sexual intercourse is used. The terms are certainly NOT equally exchangable and I think to stop this casual and joking use of the word rape we are going to have to be more up front with kids younger than we perhaps think should know about such things in order to teach them about it before their peers teach them how to play Rape Tag or to get into using the language on video games.