New movie: Ruth Maier boarded the DS Danube. She never came back.

Elsa Kvamme’s documentary is poetic and beautiful, but some choices are problematic.

“I, Ruth Maier, 18 years old, ask the world as a human being if this should happen (…) Why is a German, a German, allowed to give a Jew an earful for the simple reason that he is German, the other Jew? I say this to all of you, you Aryans who tolerate this, you are responsible for this earache, for you have let it happen ».

The quote is taken from Ruth Maier’s diary. She came to Norway as a quota refugee from Austria in 1939. On Thursday 26 November, DS Donau left the quay in Oslo. On board were 529 Jews. Only nine survived the war. Ruth Maier never returned.