Let's Go! (2014)

Twenty-one-year-old Laura returns from the United States to her hometown of Munich because her father and sister, Friede, were in a car accident. Her father died in the accident, and her sister is in a coma with little hope of recovery. Laura recalls many moments from her life and comes to terms with the fact that her mother is still unable to hug her. She tries to explore her Jewish roots. She visits Friede in the hospital several times and grows closer to her mother. Flashbacks tell the story of her life in Germany before she emigrated to America as an adult. Laura is born to two Jewish concentration camp survivors. She initially grows up in Freising, where her parents run an inn in the Bavarian tradition, without serving kosher food. They ingratiate themselves with the rural locals. Later, they move to Munich’s Borstei residential neighborhood, which lies directly beside Dachauer Straße. It is there that Laura first learns that her parents are Jewish. She forms an unusual friendship with Lucy, an American. A GI beats Lucy up after she bares her breasts in front of the neighborhood’s male residents. She finds her first love in the Jewish boy next door, until he emigrates to the United States. During a vacation in Italy, she meets another love, 39-year-old Thomas Kordt. Her father opposes the relationship, however, so the two never marry. The film also repeatedly depicts violence; for example, her father hits her several times. During the Italy vacation, he also loses his temper and strikes her when Laura criticizes her mother for wearing a bikini on the beach despite her unflattering figure. Her mother explains that her poor figure is due to her time in the concentration camp. Laura and her mother argue because Laura has never been in a camp and criticizes her for it. In response, her father slaps her. She tells him that he will never hit her again. Laura learns about the horrors that took place in the concentration camp only from her aunt Ida. Ida tells her that she pulled Laura’s mother from a pile of corpses at Bergen-Belsen. Laura’s mother was holding a dead baby in her arms. She was clutching it so tightly that Ida had to wrench it away from her. This explains why her mother could not hug her. Only at Friede’s funeral does her mother ask Laura for forgiveness, and the two embrace. Several times during the film, her father says, “Let’s go.” These were the words an American soldier said to her father when he liberated him from the concentration camp. The film ends with the liberation scene.