West German television viewers who responded sympathetically to the recent screening of the American-made NBC-TV dramatization “Holocaust,” will see another film on their home screens next month portraying the life of a Jewish family in Berlin during the Nazi era. It is titled “David Escaped From the Net,” an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by Joel Koening, first published in 1960.
Joel Koening is the pseudonym of a Jewish biochemist who has been on the staff of the Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam for the past 20 years. His novel was rediscovered recently by Peter Lilienthal, a German-Jewish television executive who made contact with the author and produced the film version.
It will be screened on March 1, coincidental with the release of the original novel in paperback edition under the title “David, the Account of a Survivor.” Koening plans to donate the royalties from both the film and paperback to a foundation he established to spread knowledge about the Nazi period among young people and to promote better understanding between Jews and non-Jews.
The story covers the years 1932-1943 in the life of the family of a fictional Rabbi Singe in Berlin. It focuses on one of the sons, David, who, with one sister, is hidden from the Nazis by compassionate Germans after the rest of his family is deported. In 1943 David and his sister manage to escape from Germany and survive.
Koening, now in his middle fifties, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview that, apart from his profession, writing is his chief interest. He said he plans a novel about the sons of the persecuted and the ###ns of the persecutors and how both live today against the backgrounds of their parents past.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
