Identity in Europa Europa

Identity and racial politics in Europa (1990) Europa Europa (1990) is the tale of a young German-Jewish boy named Solek who undergoes a series of identity transformations in his efforts to escape the Holocaust. At the beginning of the film, Solek and his family live in Nazi Germany. They decide to flee, first to Poland, and then as it becomes increasingly clear that not even Poland is a safe place, the boys' parents send their sons to the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R.

is ironically a 'safe' place for their children because at least they will not be persecuted as Jews. Solek is separated from his brother and when found by the Nazis in a Soviet orphanage he pretends that he is a German Latvian named Josef Peters. The Nazis adopt him and find him useful, thanks to his fluent German and Russian.

Thus, during the period of identity definition of most adolescents, Solek is forced to repeatedly lie about his true nature and live amongst people who regard him as from a race of subhumans. It might be assumed that the one stable, constant aspect of Solek's identity is his body: he is circumcised and this becomes a continuing preoccupation throughout the film. Solek is first discovered by a Nazi officer named Robert who is a homosexual, but the officer does not reveal this because he is also hiding something.

Later, when Solek is sent to an elite school to be educated as part of the Hitler youth, he undergoes a variety of subterfuges to 'fake' having a foreskin. A fervent Nazi girl named Leni throws herself at him but Solek refuses and is called a "limp dick" as a result.

However, even the body is not a stable clue to one's identity: ironically, while posing as a Nazi, Solek is used as an example of a perfect Aryan specimen because of the dimensions of his skull which are supposed to clearly show he is not an 'inferior' Jew. Then, when finally the Germans lose the war no one believes he is Jewish and they ask him why he does not look like the emaciated survivors of the concentration camps.

His brother identifies him, saving him from execution at the hands of the communists. On one hand, Solek is evidently a Jew because he is physically 'marked' but other than this one fact, despite the fact he lives in a place obsessed with race, he is able to act as a shape-shifter in terms of his nationality. Yet the film suggests that there is something immutable about Solek's core: the film ends with the real Solek in Israel, where he lives today.

Through all of his suffering, he still retains a core sense of his own Jewishness and also his own desire to live, even though his religion is constantly defamed by the exterior world and he must hide who he is to survive. Only once does he break his facade willingly, when he reveals to Leni's mother that he is Jewish (although a German, she hates the Nazis).

The film not only underlines that people see what they want to see but that race and nationality are fluid, mutable categories that can be easily assumed. This is contrary to the assumptions of the Nazis, who assumed that race was 'in the blood' and defined a person's whole existence. Yet it is also contrary to even less noxious forms of nationalism, which suggest that loyalty for one's country is intrinsic to one's identity.

It is only because of his willingness to be loyal to himself as an individual, not as a resident of a particular place that Solek is able to emerge intact from his experiences. Ultimately, when he to move to Israel and leave the continent of Europe, Solek suggests in his actions that his ultimate loyalty is to his identity as someone who is of a persecuted people, not to a European identity or community of any nations.

Thus, as well as the meaninglessness of nationality, there is also a strong sense of the meaningless of national borders in the film. Its title Europa suggests the conglomerate nature of all of Europe: human beings may try to create barriers between themselves based upon nationality and religion, but they are artificial constructions, as evidenced by Solomon's ease in transforming himself from a German to a Pole to a Soviet back to a German again…and then to an Israeli.

In each of his incarnation, not only does he live, but he is also shown to be irresistible to women. Desire can cross national boundaries, even though it supposedly should not. Even while Leni swears how much she despises Jews and would like to see them die, she professes her love for Solek. In deference to this idea of 'one Europe,' the film also shows a multifaceted portrait of all Germans. Not all Germans, even Aryan Germans are evil.

Many are just as much caught in the wheel of history.