At the Fountainhead (of German Strength) | movie | 1980 | Official Clip
A rich and challenging account of the experiences of a German Jewish musician who settled in Britain to escape Nazi pers | dG1fNzVWMk5fU0xqQmc
Transcript
00:00 [Sounds of a river]
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01:26 By the time I had arrived in England, most of my family had also left Germany.
01:31 That is all but my mother, who finally settled here in 1939.
01:35 She had been going backwards and forwards between England and Germany,
01:39 tying up affairs and trying to bring over what she could.
01:42 All our furniture and so forth was paid for to come here, but we got nothing.
01:47 The Nazis auctioned it all.
01:49 When the war had started, we received a letter from Holland saying
01:52 that if we sent 400 pounds, the furniture would be sent over.
01:55 But that would have just been 400 pounds to the Nazis.
01:59 So we didn't send it, and we didn't have it.
02:01 On her final trip over here, my mother was caught for trying to smuggle out her furs and jewelry.
02:07 She was in prison for three days.
02:09 Fortunately, my father knew the Bechstein piano people.
02:12 They were great Nazis and friends of Hitler's.
02:15 But Bechstein was also a friend of my father's, too.
02:18 I think my father rang him up from London to ask him to try and get my mother out, which he did.
02:25 By the way, Bechstein perhaps wasn't quite such a great Nazi.
02:39 He was what we used to call a "Muss-Nazi."
02:42 He had to join the party in order to keep his business going.
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03:47 Johanna Schmidt, now known as John Smith,
04:07 joined the alien pioneer corps of the British Army in 1940
04:11 in order to, in his own words, "have a go at the Nazis."
04:16 He was given the choice of three British names,
04:20 Smart, Smith, or Smythe.
04:24 There were two reasons for his disillusionment with Army life.
04:28 Firstly, the British NCOs showed signs of resentment
04:32 and made him and his colleagues feel like bloody foreigners.
04:37 Secondly, he saw no action.
04:40 His section was due to leave for France immediately,
04:43 but an outbreak of German measles prevented this occurrence.
04:47 In retrospect, he considers himself lucky,
04:51 as many of his colleagues did not return.
04:55 In 1945, in the last few days of the war,
05:00 a close friend of his, also a German,
05:03 was killed in action in Germany by a German mine.
05:07 Johannes had thought him one of the best clarinet players he had ever heard.
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07:04 [MUSIC]