Sophie's Choice

Sophie's Choice is a movie released in 1982 and went a  long way toward cementing Meryl Streep's reputation as an actress with a wide range of ability.


The following is extracted from the screen play.  Changes were made to improve the readability:

"My father was a Professor of Law at the University of Krakow.  He believed in that human perfection was a possibility.  I was married to a disciple of my father."

"My father was working for weeks on the speech he called: 
"Poland's Jewish Problem"

"Ordinarily I typed those speeches and I didn't hear the words, their meaning, but this time I came upon a word that I have never heard before."

" 'The solution to Poland's Jewish Problem' he concluded 'was vernichtung'. Extermination."

"One day I was at Mass and I had a premonition.  I ran out of the church and went to the University.  The gate was locked.  There were many Germans there and I saw the professors.  They were being loaded into a truck and this one part of the canvas cover had moved away and I saw my father's face and the face of my husband behind him."

"The Nazi pulled away and I never saw those faces again.  They took them to Sachsenhausen and shot them the next day."

"Later, I was arrested.  My children were sent with me to Auschwitz."

This is historically accurate.  Intellectuals were among the first groups exterminated by both the Nazi and the Bolsheviks.  Both groups saw intellectuals as competition and as nuclei for future opposition.  Sophie's father and husband were both summarily executed even though they were in agreement with Nazi objectives.

This movie should be required watching for college students who are enchanted with Socialism, Totalitarianism and who think they will be allowed to "run the show" in the new world order.