Eyewitness to History

Stille Nacht explores the critical decisions of personal belief that confronted many Germany citizens on the eve of Adolf Hitler's appointment as national Chancellor. On December 24, 1932, family patriarch Karl sets aside struggles with Depression-era debt to host a traditional holiday homecoming. His kin gather to Parchim, a rural village of the Mecklenburg region where sentiment for the National Socialist German Workers' Party is on the rise. When Karl's sister, Ilse, arrives from nearby progressive Berlin after an extended family absence, they discuss the pressing national concerns over social class and finance. But their very family bonds are tested when their dispute comes to the NSDAP--the Nazi Party--and whether leader Adolf Hitler is going too far by instituting identity-building propaganda campaigns designed to unite the citizens of Germany by utterly dividing them.

Anna Krystyna Wroblewska was born on March 27, 1938, in Warsaw, Poland. In September, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and Anna's father made his way to France and joined the Polish army there. His division was near the Swiss border when France capitulated and they crossed over into Switzerland. He was never able to return to Poland. In 1941, Anna's mother underwent what was a relatively common operation but due to the lack of medical care and medication, she died. In the summer of 1944, Anna and her brother were being cared for by her Aunt Ella in Warsaw. During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, her Aunt's apartment block was evacuated by the Germans to be sent to the concentration camps. Anna was loaded into a boxcar and taken to Birkenau, a part of Auschwitz. There, Anna was separated from her adult companion and assigned to the children’s barracks. In January 1945, Anna escaped and was taken in by the family of a local blacksmith. She was reunited with her father in Switzerland in 1946.