They came to Germany to free the country from racism and oppression. But their own army and country were ruled by strict segregation. This documentary by Dag Freyer tells the story of the African-American soldiers stationed in post-World War Two Germany. Accepted by the German population as representatives of one of the victorious powers, it was the first time they experienced a kind of equality. They were allowed to enter the same places as white people, relationships with white women – unthinkable at home – were the order of the day.
The shock after their return from the war was all the bigger. Once back in the States, the black US military personnel found they were facing the same conditions as before the war: segregation and discrimination determined their lives. In Germany the soldiers had seen the opposite and this experience of freedom was to give a massive boost to the civil rights movement. An irony of history: one of the foundation stones for the victory over segregation in the United States was laid in the ruins of Nazi Germany, of all places.
In “A Touch of Freedom”, World War Two veterans remember their time in Germany and their political work at home. Among them is former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, talking about his deployment in Gelnhausen in one of his most personal interviews.

This multiple award-winning documentary by Emmy Award winner Janet Tobias, acclaimed at a host of international festivals, tells another incredible story of living and surviving in times of persecution and war.
In 1993, New York speleologist Chris Nicola makes a discovery. While exploring a subterranean system in the Ukraine he comes across some highly unusual objects: a woman’s shoe, a house key, a hand-hewn millstone … It takes him nine years to fit all the parts of this mysterious story that happened 60 years back even then together.
In May 1942, as the Nazis advance further and further into Eastern Europe, five Jewish families flee into one of the biggest cave systems in the world: 124 kilometres long with five lakes. 38 Jews –from infant to old man – are now hiding in the darkness. They make themselves at home, build beds, and lamps from old bottles. Some of them frequently risk their lives leaving the cave to get firewood and food from the world above. For almost two years, the cave-dwellers live, work, eat, and sleep right beneath their enemies’ feet. When the Nazis retreat in April 1944, all 38 Jews come out of their cave: mud-encrusted, in ragged clothes, and blinded by the sunlight – but alive.