In films, perhaps even more than in life, action defines character. Whereas a novel might permit a voice to explain motivation, a motion picture is just that – a moving image, at its bestwhenit shows rather than states. Film externalizes through expression, gesture, and behavior,with dialogue remaining a secondary component in the creation of meaning. This is important to remember when viewing films that treat rescue during the Holocaust (many of which were made in the early 1990s). The facts are not in question: Just This Forest, for example, depicts an Aryan Polish woman who tries to save a Jewish child; but why remains uncertain. This is as true of a recent film like Divided We Fall as of antecedents such as Good Evening, Mr.Wallenberg and Schindler's List. They leave it to the audience to ponder why one individual is willing to risk his life to protect a Jew while another remains indifferent or complicit with the murderers.

The relatively recent focus on rescuers is no surprise. After previous Holocaust films that centered on Jewish victims and Nazi perpetrators, there had to be an audience surrogate beyond the oppressed survivor or the criminal – one with whom a viewer would indeed want to identify. Although “righteous Gentiles” comprised a tiny fraction of the European population duringWorldWar II, their existence is cause for celebration, on screen and off. Given that motion pictures have always centered on “the hero” who enables “the happy end,” stories of Holocaust rescue proliferated in movie theaters and on television in the 1990s.