Film project on Sally Ehrlich

Experiencing history and conveying these experiences in a vivid way – students of the secondary school Gymnasium Albertinum succeeded in doing this very convincingly during the 2001 / 2002 school year in the framework of a film project.

Under the direction of their history teacher, Mrs Daniela Wagner, class 9a worked together to make a film about Sally Ehrlich, a Coburg businessman of Jewish faith who was deported on April 24, 1942, and did not survive the terror of the National Socialists. Nearly the whole class was committed and involved, be it in interviewing contemporary witnesses, in researching in the places where the protagonist used to live, in libraries and in the city archive; in directing, as actors or in editing. Different film locations in the city centre, but also the living room of the grandparents of one of the students provided an authentic background.

The result was a touching document of the time, which is in many respects exemplary not only for a Jewish fate during the Third Reich, but also for how this history was afterwards buried and forgotten. In 2003, the project won second place statewide in the student competition “Signs of Commemoration” of the Bavarian state government.