Steal a Pencil for Me

Kevin Crust gives "Steal a Pencil for Me" a Critic's Choice award.

It's a scenario that sounds like the romantic tragicomedy Woody Allen never wrote (but might have): Unhappily married, impoverished Dutch Jewish accountant Jack Polak meets young, wealthy beauty Ina Soep at a birthday party and is instantly smitten. Unfortunately, it's 1943 and Holland is occupied by the Nazis. Within months, Jack, Ina and Jack's wife, Manja, are all picked up and find themselves in the same concentration camp.

But this is no piece of fiction. Director Michèle Ohayon's striking documentary "Steal a Pencil for Me" tells this most unusual love story with grace and compassion. Through the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps, Jack and Ina's relationship -- kept alive primarily through letters -- survives against all odds.

Synopsis: A man, his wife, and the women he has fallen deeply in love with experience jealousy and heartbreak while housed together in the same barrack of a World War II-era concentration camp in Oscar-nominated director Michele Ohayon (Cowboy Del Amore)'s unflinching look at love in a land ravaged by war. His marriage already failing when he and his wife were assigned to live in a concentration camp, Jack soon found comfort in the arms of new love interest Ina. Though his wife voiced vehement objection to the relationship, Jack continued to communicate with his newfound love in a series of furtively-penned love letters. It was through these clandestine correspondences that Jack and Ina were eventually able to gain the strength needed to get through such a dark time, but as the war draws to a close all three survivors are forced to make some difficult, and potentially life-altering, decisions. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Released November 2007
In English and Dutch with English subtitles.
Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.
Documentary Drama