Desperate Hours : Saving Jewish lives from the hands of the Nazis.

The film interviewed the children of these intellectuals, most of them recalled their childhood growing up in a Turkish seaside town idyll.

Once the war broke out, Turkey, being a neutral state, provided their Jewish population an equality in their living condition. Some heroic tales along the line of Oskar Schindler were told. But aside from these heart-warming rescue stories, documentary-filmmaker Michael Berenbaum balanced his film by recounting a blotched chapter in the Turkish-Jewish history about the Struma, a ship with Jewish refugees that was left stranded in the ocean for months, waiting for the Turkish government’s permission to allow its passengers to enter Turkey. The ship was finally sunk by a Russian torpedo, ending more than 700 lives.

Another amazing story happened in the Catholic church of Turkey. Archbishop Joseph Roncalli saved numerous lives by providing the Turkish Jews with protection. Later on, Roncalli went on to become Pope John XXIII. In the sixties, after thoroughly studying the Bible, he officially announced that the Jewish were not responsible for the death of Jesus. And that Jesus was a Jew himself.

The film is like a breath of fresh air that does not come along too often when the issue of the Holocaust is discussed. At the time when humanity is at its low, "Desperate Hours" provides a redemption.