Stop in Paradise – Memories of Red Cross Train Children

2022, Documentary 48′, P: Schweizerisches Rotes Kreuz Zürich, D: Hans-Urs Bachmann & Lea Moliterni

Gerhard Sauder, born in 1938, was one of these “train children.” Starving and with a father missing at the front, he traveled with thousands of other children from bombed-out Germany to Zurich in 1947. He experienced “the happiest days” of his childhood with a family who lived in a spacious house with a garden in the heart of District 5. Those Zurich months in the summer of 1947 even became an emergency supply for his subsequent life. The film “Stop in Paradise” unfolds this historical event of the Red Cross train children from the perspective of those affected. Contemporary witnesses speak and recount their experiences from that time—and how they are still shaped by this experience today. At the center of our story is Professor Dr. Gerhard Sauder.

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