End of the Line: Seeshaupt

Walter Steffen's documentary focuses on the last days of the “Final Solution,” a time when 4,000 Jewish concentration camp inmates found themselves on a train odyssey through Bavaria that ended in their liberation by American forces. The central focus here is Louis Sneh, a teenager in Hungary in 1945, who was apprehended by the Nazis and sent to the Dachau sub-camp of Muehldorf Mettenheim, where he worked with fellow Hungarian and Greek Jews as slave laborers in a Nazi munitions operation. Sneh offers a cogent recollection of his Holocaust years in this film that not only records the intricate details of his own survival, but also the stories of those who did not live through the carnage. This historical portrait is rounded out with testimonies from German civilians who helped some liberated prisoners after the war ended. End of the Line: Seeshaupt serves as a reminder of the indefatigable spirit of survivors such as Sneh who persevered under atrocious conditions. Both as a historical documentary and as a portrait of individual courage during wartime, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)