4 real historical locations · Germany, Poland
Kate Winslet's Oscar-winning role as Hanna Schmitz, a German woman who has an affair with a teenage boy in post-war Germany — only for him to encounter her years later as a defendant at a war crimes trial for her actions as an Auschwitz guard. A film about complicity and the burden of the Nazi generation.
CinemaMapped has mapped 4 real historical locations where the story takes place, spanning Germany, Poland.
Teenager Michael Berg begins a secret affair with older woman Hanna Schmitz in post-war Heidelberg — years later he encounters her as a defendant at a war cr...
Set against West Germany's reckoning with its Nazi past in the 1960s and 1970s, the film reflects the real Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963-1965), among the first significant German prosecutions of camp personnel. The...
View location →Fifteen-year-old Michael Berg begins his affair with tram conductor Hanna Schmitz in post-war Heidelberg, reading to her before they make love — unaware of h...
Heidelberg survived the war virtually undamaged as it was an American military HQ objective. The film is set in the late 1950s, the first generation reckoning with what their parents did.
View location →Law student Michael recognises Hanna among the defendants at a Frankfurt trial for SS camp guards who locked Jewish women in a burning church. He realises sh...
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963–65) prosecuted 22 former SS members. They were a watershed in West German confrontation with the Nazi past, bringing evidence of the camps to a domestic audience.
View location →The site of the war crime: Hanna and other guards locked over 300 Jewish women in a burning church during the death march from Auschwitz, letting them perish...
During winter 1944–45, hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners were forced on death marches as Soviet forces advanced. Guards shot or abandoned those who fell behind.
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