World War II · Film · 2006
Black Book
Zwartboek
A Jewish singer who survives an ambush on refugees joins the Dutch Resistance under a false name and goes undercover inside the German security police, where nobody is quite who they seem.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 2 places.
Stop 1: The Biesbosch
Rachel and her family board a boat that is supposed to carry Jewish refugees to the liberated south, and fall into an SS ambush.
Stop 2: The Hague
Key location
As Ellis de Vries, she seduces the local security police chief and plants a microphone inside German headquarters for the Resistance.
What really happened
Around 102,000 of the roughly 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were murdered in the Holocaust, one of the highest proportions in Western Europe. Many survived only by hiding, and some were betrayed for money; in 1944 and 1945 Resistance groups guided people across the Biesbosch marshes to the liberated south.
Verhoeven built his thriller from real cases: the hunger winter in the occupied north, collaborators who robbed Jews fleeing the country, and the execution of two German deserters by their own comrades in a Canadian-guarded camp in Amsterdam in May 1945, days after the liberation. Rachel, Müntze and the traitors around them are fictional.
Where to watch
Checking streaming services…
Full details
- Original title
- Zwartboek
- Directed by
- Paul Verhoeven
- Countries
- Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom
- Languages
- Dutch, German, English, Hebrew
- Released
- 2006
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Resistance
- Holocaust
