Drei Tage im April (1995)

It is shortly before the end of the war, in April 1945, in a Hohenlohe-Franconian village called Nesselbühl. Most of the residents are waiting for the American troops to arrive and thus for the war to end. The rumble of artillery can be heard in the distance. Alongside retreating Wehrmacht troops, SS patrols are also present. They execute alleged Wehrmacht deserters who are camped without marching orders in the village inn. After a locomotive breaks down one night, the Reichsbahn has to uncouple three freight cars and one passenger car from an SS special train and simply leave them standing at the station. The next morning, the villagers discover what the cars contain: prisoners from a concentration camp. Packed inside and guarded by SS soldiers, the people are starving and dying of thirst. Their cries frighten the villagers. This reminds the people of the village of the negative aspects of the Nazi regime. The village leadership avoids making a decision: as they have learned to do, the mayor, the local farmers’ leader, and the stationmaster refer the matter to the authorities above them. The village priest was silenced years ago. Most of the villagers are occupied with their own problems. Only 20-year-old Anna, daughter of the farmers’ leader Baisch, the village’s League of German Girls leader and an ardent admirer of the Führer, wants to help. She is secretly supported by a stranded singer from a Wehrmacht entertainment troupe. But when Anna is directly confronted with the prisoners’ suffering, she has to vomit. Only a Polish forced laborer breaks through the apathetic paralysis of the villagers, who merely stand watching, and hands out food. On the third day, the SS soldiers have suddenly disappeared after the singer secretly bribed them with wine. The film ends with some villagers pushing the cars carrying the concentration-camp prisoners toward the neighboring community—and thus into the unknown, represented cinematically by fog.