MY DEAR HANNA – Streaming On Demand

Everything changed for Marianne Szegedy-Maszak the day she found a cache of letters written by her father, Aladár, in the bedroom of her mother, Hanna, after her passing in 2002. What unfolds through this multitude of letters is a timeless love story between a Jewish woman and Christian man amidst the tumult and terror of Hitler’s dictatorship. Marianne recounts the history of her parents’ perilous lives during the war and transports viewers back to 1939 Hungary, the first country after World War I to adopt antisemitic laws and later align itself with Nazi Germany. Hanna, a member of Hungary’s most significant (and Jewish) industrialist conglomerate, was forced to evade the Nazis while her father, a wartime diplomat, worked directly for Hitler before protesting his leader’s ideologies, a fateful choice with devastating consequences. Throughout Hitler’s reign of terror, the love between Marianne’s parents persisted, unveiling itself decades later for their daughter to uncover. A heartwarming family memoir, this deeply personal documentary honors a forgotten, tenacious romance from the war while ensuring that these true stories from the Shoah may never be forgotten.