Jiri Weil Mendelssohn is on the Roof

Annotation

Prague withers under the boot of Nazi occupation. The Acting Reich Protector cruises the city, taking pleasure in its deserted streets, feeling like one with the marshal statues, and suddenly becomes offended by the statue of Mendelssohn atop a building. The Jewish composer must be removed. Meanwhile, the real Jews of Prague are rounded up, the lucky ones sent to a ghetto, the unlucky ones sent east into the unknown. Of course, they are all unlucky, eventually, from the innocent to the collaborators, and even those in the resistance who try to hide their countrypeople from the crushing progress of the "Final Solution." Weil, himself a death camp survivor, writes an unblinking portrait of the Prague he knew. The many characters humanize an inhuman world and make personal the broader struggle of death and hatred.