EXODUS OVER DE DONAU

The Danube Exodus is a documentary about an exodus in two directions, caused by a decision made by the Great Powers. It did not find its way into the history books and no professional cameramen witnessed it. We are able to re-live it because an amateur filmmaker realized its significance and recorded it. It is the summer of 1939. The puppet government of Budapest is rapidly becoming very friendly with the third Reich. Two boats are hired for the exodus of 900 Slovak Jews. Captain Nðndor Andrðsovits meticulously filmed the travellers during their journey to the Black Sea, and though his film could have finished there, it did not. When he next points his camera at the deck of the "Erzsebet Kiralyne", it becomes apparent that the ship will not be sailing back empty. According to the pact made between Hitler and Stalin, the Romanian regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were ceded to the Soviet Union. The Germans living in those regions had to be repatriated. For this purpose, the Nazis rented the same boats that had just unloaded their Jewish cargo. Germans clad in black come on board with their wives and children and are registered on deck by German officers.