50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. & Mrs. Kraus

I usually don't watch TV or movie, if I do, I would prefer to watch documentary films. Recently, I watched 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. & Mrs. Kraus, by Steven Pressman, which is the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple who, in 1939, decide to travel to Vienna to save the lives of 50 children. The couple are Jewish, but the mission that they take is not out of religious passion, it is rather a benign version of self-sacrifice and humane action, something that we now rarely hear or know.

Their journey to the Austria, which is under the control of Nazi is not easy. They encounter numerous government bureaucracy and discouragement from people who afraid to have Jewish in their communities, event Jews - who afraid of increasing anti-semitism - tried to persuade the couple to give up on their plan.

The couple eventually travel to Berlin and then to Vienna. There, the Kraus met with hundreds of families who are willing to send off their little ones to thousands of miles away in hopes that if they would die, their children will be alive. This is a heart-wrenching story, specially when some of those children who are now in their 70s or 80s narrate their own stories about abandoning their parents. This is the story that is relevant to our time and it also teaches us what we can do to make this world more beautiful and more tolerable for each other.