A teenage boy named Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) gets torn away from his family and escapes to Poland and he is taken into a Communist Youth orphanage where he becomes a first-rate Communist. The Nazis attack the orphanage, everyone runs but he is caught. Before they can uncover his Jewish heritage he announces that he is a German gentile who got stuck in Russia. They buy his plea and he becomes a translator for the Nazis.

In a couple of humorously ironic moments Solomon (who takes the name Joseph) ends up becoming the Nazi battalion's favorite soldier – including one homosexual officer – and later he is credited with helping them win a key battle against the Russians.

Solomon is sent to a Nazi school where he is decorated with honors as a Hitler Youth and manages to fool everyone – including a young Anti-Semitic woman (Julie Delpy) – that he is full blooded German. This is particularly difficult to do because he has to hide the fact that he has been circumcised.

The film, directed by Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and released in 1990, is a quick-paced, earnest drama that manages to be heartfelt without being sentimental and well-acted and directed without being obvious. The film is full of fine set pieces and magnificent individual scenes. What's remarkable too about the film is the way Holland humanizes all of the characters - even the Nazi characters seem human.

Best of all the Europa, Europa shows the remarkable lengths one young man went to survive the Holocaust. In this case, he changed his identity and used opportunistic tactics to stay alive, which in turn helped him find his true identity.

Video
The image is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and unfortunately is non-anamorphic, which means the image looks good but not sharp and clear. The image too shows wear and there are flecks and specks throughout the print. The colors are more toward earth tone than bright, which makes sense for period effect.

Audio:
Audio is in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono and sound okay. It would have been nice to have it punched up a bit.

Extras:
The only extra is a trailer, which looks okay.

Overall:
This excellent Polish film is one of the best films about surviving the Holocaust. The DVD presentation is okay and therefore it is recommended with some reservations. It would have been good to have a full fledged disc but it's still worth a look because it is such a well made film.