Haven (2001)

A female journalist accompanies 1000 Jewish prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp to New York and helps them overcome bureaucratic hurdles and prejudice.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 6-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD Product Description

Haven

Excellently done! We have no idea what so many people went through as they sought to live to the end of WWII. December 24, 2007

Haven -- (originally a TV Miniseries)

This film is a somewhat idealized and liberally adapted dramatization of a WWII event that was sadly unique: The transportation in 1944 of 892 Jewish refugees from the Holocaust to the United States -- the only ones allowed on U.S. soil throughout the War. They were sheltered at Fort Ontario, Oswego, NY for the rest of the war. Eventually, they were allowed to immigrate under the various immigration quotas. I happen to be one of the lucky individuals in that shipment. And although I can say that the story is less than 100 percent accurate, the film is very successful in its presentation and impact.

Starring as Ruth Gruber, the overseer of the project, is Natasha Richardson, delivering her lines in an amazingly authentic Brooklyn accent characteristic of Gruber, no small achievement for an English actress. Anne Bancroft and Martin Landau play her parents and William Petersen and Hal Holbrook play US congressmen.

The 3-hour-plus film is loaded with drama and tension and holds together very admirably. Most notably, the film gives the viewer an intriguing snapshot of America in the midst of the war and the attitudes of her people toward refugees. I might add that it also gives an equally graphic picture of the refugees' impressions of America and Americans. February 24, 2006

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