White Mountain Jewish Film Festival Presented “Plan A”

Plan A - Challenging Film, Deep Discussion

Plan A,” the second title in the 2023 edition of the White Mountain Jewish Film Festival (WMJFF), was hardly a “fun movie,” but it was riveting. It was screened at the Colonial Theatre last Thursday.  

Dr. Kate DeConinck, the guest speaker recruited by impresario Dorothy Goldstone, observed in prefatory remarks that unlike many Holocaust films, “Plan A” was about not the victims but the survivors.  Dr. DeConinck is the director of the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene (NH) State College.  

The film is about a plot—unconsummated—by survivors to exact revenge on the Nazis by poisoning the water supplies of German cities. That was Plan A. As Dr. DeConinck and other theatergoers observed in the post-film discussion, had Plan A been put into effect, it might have led to Jews being known down through history as “well poisoners.”  

The film also raised the question of extra-legal punishment, some of which—at point-blank range—was depicted in the film as armed Jews executed Germans summarily.   Some of that was motivated by surviving Jews finding that their homes had been appropriated by Germans. The German-Israeli film was shot in a grim black-and-white against seemingly ubiquitous postwar scenes of rubble in the streets.

Thanks to our patio hosts for the evening, Mark Mendelsohn and Jesse Knapp, who graciously provided tasty snacks and enlivening beverages.

–Edward Cowan

Guest speaker Dr. Kate DeConinck, sets up the film with historical and psychological contexts

Festival Directors Dave and Dorothy Goldstone greet festival attendees