Army of Saviours

Army of Saviours is based on the memories of Marga Spiegel. In her narrative, published in 1965, she describes how courageous farmers in southern Münsterland hid her, her husband Menne and their little daughter Karin from 1943 until 1945, saving them from deportation to the extermination camps in the East. The film tells this story of survival with a sense of the absurdity of daily life and with the typical Westphalian humour. Without reservation, the farmers offer the refugees their protection. That this turns them into heroes never occurs to them. They are used to weathering even dangerous situations somehow, guided only by their instinct and century-old code of ethics. They risk their own lives, and, if necessary, even those of their families. In Yad Vashem, the farmers names are immortalized: Heinrich Aschoff, Hubert Pentrop, Bernhard Südfeld, Heinrich Silkenböhmer and Bernhard Sickmann. The film Army of Saviours wants to create a memorial in honour of these silent heroes.