Haven

I had the pleasure of meeting Ruth Gruber,little had I known at the time of what all this woman had accomplished,the lives she saved,the dangers she had put herself thru...I would have surly felt small as an ant had I known that day what all this great woman had done.I would have broken down,cried in her lap.thanked her for her courage.I enjoyed the movie,and now own and treasure the book signed by her.I am shocked at how some people will say the Holocaust never happened,they are truly out of touch with reality.The awful things that were done tears at my heart,I cry every time I watch a movie or documentary about it.It was awful and I think in our times now...many are afraid that this is where our own nation may be heading for.But that will never happen here.

I find that Haven is extremely engrossing, inspiring enough for me to invite a number of people to watch its four hour length and to wake up thinking about it months after seeing it for the first time. It is not mawkish. It is about a harsh reality and it is about history and it is also about telling us about society in the time of WWII. It might not be comfortable for some of us to accept the reality of rejection, of discrimination, of the Holocaust and of the genuine responsibility of governments of the world who looked away from Nazism and its genocidal

maniacs. The anti-American slant of at least one of the reviews smacks of a

parochial nationalism that hides the historical truth that Canada ALSO was

guilty of looking away from victims of the Holocaust. Had the U.S. president Roosevelt lifted one political finger things could have been a lot better for them. Hitler took advantage of the fact that no one would take Jews into their borders before and during the war to carry out his demoniacal plans and no one with

political power tried to stop it It nor did the Allies even bother to bomb the gas chambers nor the railroads going to the concentration camps. It took the

courage and moral fibre of the little man from Missouri, Harry S. Truman , and little people like Ruth Gruber to make their mark. This film makes this

abundantly clear. This might not be a popular position but I can assure the

readers, that in my experience, he and she are held in the highest regard and FDR is now considered a moral failure amongst survivors. The film points this out along with many allusions to the prejudice of the State Department against even these poor victims of the Holocaust. If facts and well acted theatre can interact then this film does it all.

The similarity of roles played by Liam Neeson in "Schindler's List" and Natasha Richardson in "Haven" is apparent (one hero, the other heroine) saving Jewish lives. "Haven" draws the viewer in by focusing on America's neglect for rescuing Jewish families from Hitler during WW2. This movie tells an equally powerful story of the lives of Jewish families that needed restoration during/after the holocaust. This movie reminds us what the word holocaust actually means, both for those lives taken and for those lives left behind. Well told story, with great supporting acting from Hal Holbrook, Anne Bancroft, etc.

This story was just amazing. It touches you and helps you realize things about the War that would have never thought. How people suffered and how one woman wanted to help them. Natasha Richardson and Tamara Gorski are woman who I have seen in movies before and loved. They both did an awesome job in this movie as did everyone else. If you get the chance, take a look. I thought at first this would be a boring story I would have no intrest in. I was wrong. It's amazing.

This movie is based on the book of the same name of a woman who worked for the Secretary of the Interior (Ickies) who claimed in the book "to not have met a Jew until he was 16" which could have added to the alienation felt by the nearly 1000 Jews and Christians brought to Oswego, New York in 1944. This movie appears like a soap box from which a very non -Jewish looking Richardson hears the evils of the Nazis during WWII screams at the past, not to real people in the State Department (who definitely knew the Nazis were up to something in the late 1930s/early 1940s). However the point of the book was to not show hate against many of the Americans in the story. The people of Oswego, New York in this movie are shown as communist and disease fearing people who are acting like, "why did this happen to us?". However, in the book they met with their new neighbors as best they could: throwing food/clothes over the fence which separated the two peoples. Many dramatic opportunities were passed up in the story, including the variety show, in which the refugees gave a show for the soldiers on the boat they shared passage.

Could have been much better, if they had stuck to what had happened and read the book about the real Ruth Gruber a truly amazing woman who is not done justice here.