Sophie’s Choice

Age Appropriateness:

•  Rating: R
• Our recommendation: Middle School / Early High School
• Contains difficult concepts related to emotional abuse and mental health, as well as depictions of the Holocaust.

Summary:  

A young writer named Stingo, moves to New York where he becomes friends with Sophie, a Polish Christian Holocaust survivor, and her boyfriend, Nathan. Nathan is abusive to Sophie and suffers from mental illness. Throughout the film Sophie reveals more of her story and how she survived Auschwitz. In an emotionally vulnerable moment with Stingo, Sophie tells him the story of the now iconic “Sophie’s Choice” in which a Nazi officer forces her to pick whether her son and her daughter should survive by threatening to send both to the gas chambers if Sophie refused to choose.

 

Historical Accuracy:

http://auschwitz.org/en/history/categories-of-prisoners/poles-in-auschwitz/

• The Auschwitz Website offers more information on Polish people in Auschwitz
• Here are some key facts
  • The Nazi’s goal for Poland was to remove, through displacement and murder, Polish people and ethnic minorities
  • The Nazis wanted to fill Poland with Aryan Germans
  • Concentration camps were essential to the Nazis achieving this goal

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005473

• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a page on the Polish victims of the Holocaust
• Here are some key facts
  • The Nazis perceived Polish people as inferior to the Aryan race
  • Germany overtook Poland in September 1939
  • The Nazis wanted to eliminate Polish culture
  • AB-Aktion was the Nazi plan to murder Polish leaders to prevent resistance to the Nazi regime

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-quot-lebensborn-quot-program

• The Jewish Virtual Library has a page about the Lebensborn Program
• Here are some key facts
  • The Lebensborn program was established to help increase the Aryan population by enabling “racially pure” women to have children with Nazis
  • Himmler established this program
  • After 1939, the Lebensborn program was expanded to include the practice of kidnapping children who appeared Aryan and giving them to Aryan parents to raise as Germans

Our Take:  

Sophie’s Choice does a great job of telling the story of a Holocaust survivor and the emotional and psychological trauma she suffers. Holocaust survivors are frequently idolized and considered wiser for having survived such an atrocity. However, Sophie’s desire to stay in an abusive relationship, internal conflict about her father’s role in the war,  and attempted suicide highlight some of the many difficulties Holocaust survivors continued to endure after the war was over. In addition, Sophie is a Christian Polish woman who was sent to Auschwitz, which is a narrative that is not often told. Therefore, there are reasonable lessons embedded within the movie.

However, this movie is emotionally manipulative. In particular, the iconic scene of Sophie being separated from her children leave audiences imagining what they would do if they were in Sophie’s position. This does not achieve many main goals of Holocaust education, which prioritizes historical accuracy, testimony, and prevention. Additionally, Holocaust education should avoid putting learners in the shoes of a Holocaust survivor because no one can ever truly know what they would do in such an extreme situation.

Finally, the film’s odd dramatization and romance story also distract viewers from the watered-down lessons the film could potentially offer.

Questions:

• How does mental illness affect Sophie?
•  How does Sophie’s father’s ideology affect how you viewed Sophie?
• Why has “Sophie’s Choice” become a colloquial term for a difficult decision? Is this problematic?
• What is a “choice-less choice”?
• What other ways were victims of the Holocaust forced to make choice-less choices?
• Would Sophie be considered a victim of the Holocaust? Why? Why not?
• How did Sophie’s experiences affect her after the Holocaust was over?
• How did it feel when Sophie had to choose between her children? Why do you think you felt that way?
• How were Polish people treated in the Holocaust?
• How do you feel about Sophie? What do you think about her?

 

Other films to watch: Number the Stars