Little Traitor

Films teach so much history!  They take us back in time and throw us into a world that existed way back when.

The Little Traitor brings us back to Israel, that is, Palestine, as it was in 1947.  For readers who might not be acquainted with this past reality, here's the basic situation:

Jews and Arabs lived side by side in relative peace after WWII, because the British were assigned by the League of Nations to watch over Palestine.  The British were caught in the middle between two feuding people.  The Jews were trying to establish a place where the survivors from the Nazi death camps could live.  The British tried to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants, as related in the film Exodus (if you have not seen Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint in that historical masterpiece, that's a must!)

In this very tense setting, a young boy of about nine, a member of a family of Polish Jewish immigrants who lost all their relatives in the Holocaust, grows up hating the British soldiers.  He defies the curfew every night.  He plots to drive out the evil British with the red hats!

NO spoiler, so I can't go much further.  Suffice it say that the hate-filled boy meets a very warm, father-like soldier, played brilliantly by Alfred Molina.  The friendship turns him around.  Soon, he finds a best friend in an older man who takes the boy under his wing.

What do fellow Jews think about a kid cavorting with the "enemy?"  Is the kid just friendly toward the British soldier or a traitor?

The film is taut.  We are on the edge of our seats for the majority of the story.  We fear the worst.  Then the plot takes a little different twist.  A good one?

For you to discover, dear readers!  If you want a great story and a fine history lesson about pre-1948 Israel, this film is for you.