Original subtitles

[Handel's "Fra l'ombre e gl'orrori" playing - Opera]

[Hilde] I think it's only right

that this diary arrives in your hands

and you keep it properly.

[Alex] For a long time, I searched for the white stone

that purifies the soul from sins.

A diary is a necessity

to recount how you ceased to be true to yourself.

[Lively swing music]

My inner nakedness was my inner most secret.

I arrived in Berlin in a cold winter's day

and it seemed to me that everyone I met on my way

knew it already.

I abandoned my hometown to get away from those people

who all my life have told me how to behave,

what to think, who to be.

Berlin seems like a great place to start looking for myself.

I have my whole life ahead of me to answer that question,

"Who am I?"

Finally I meet the Wise Man of Berlin, as he's called.

He has full, fleshy lips and clever eyes.

He offered me his chubby hand and introduced himself

as Doctor Hirschfeld.

He was one of the nicest people I've ever met.

[Dr] Prof. Fromm told me about you and your soul in torment.

He tells me that you are a brilliant writer,

but you've abandoned your talent to teach.

But who are you really, Alex?

I don't know. I have the body of a man

but there is a slight doubt about the appearance of things.

After all, I don't even know who I am.

[chuckling] You are transsexual.

Transsexual? New to me! What does it mean?

I coined the term.

Well, I don't know what it means,

but I hope that being transsexual does not imply

I am a lesser sort of a human being.

And why should that be so?

This sexual orientation can be found at all levels of society

and among respectable people.

Those who say otherwise speak from pure ignorance and bigotry.

Being transsexual doesn't mean I have to deny my real self

in order to make someone else feel comfortable?

[Dr] We all have the right to express our authenticity

in the respect of diversity!

It's true.

For too long I've betrayed myself.

Find the courage to be yourself.

Your only risk is learning something about yourself.

You have no idea of the number of sexual orientations,

it's almost infinite!

In all individuals there's a mix of male and female elements.

Take my advice, go and visit the Kurfürstendamm district,

then come back and see us.

[Upbeat jazz music]

[Alex] Rudolf came into my life in March 1933

and never left it again.

I remember the day and the hour I first sat eyes on this boy

who was to be the source of my greatest happiness

and of my greatest despair.

[Piano music]

I thought about my conversation with Dr Hirschfeld.

"Find the courage to be yourself."

The moment had arrived.

In that moment,

when I found the courage not to lower my eyes,

but hold his gaze as transparent as crystal,

I discovered freedom.

[Piano music]

And so we stood together,

just holding each other without saying a word

and time stood still.

It was all we could do

to stop us from being swept away into the night.

Rudolf, just imagine we can go anywhere we want to.

I've always aspired to love,

but in fact I never knew what it really was

because I always felt foreign within my body.

You have to keep living! Live to change the prejudices!

To be, simply to just be, is a challenge.

I haven't been so brave until today.

I've understood that I have to take care of my soul.

I'm really not afraid of physical pain.

It's the irrationality of it all... it terrifies me.

Our value depends on the values we create,

both material and spiritual.

If love mostly serves to enhance the happiness for all people,

then it's perfectly comprehensible:

it should also include persons of the same sex

or transsexuals.

Love frees mankind...

and action makes it great.

The time has come to open my body up to desire.

The patient is prepared, we are ready to begin.

[Opera music]

And so, I shall go out.

It's time to be born again.

I'm not actually going to change.

I will simply return to myself to the time

before the lines of my hand drew my destiny.

I have taken off the bandages around my chest,

I have stroked myself at length.

It didn't give me pleasure,

but I had violent sensations like electrical shocks.

I knew that the return to myself would take time,

that I have to re-educate my emotions.

On the 6th of May, 1933

the German Student Union made an organised attack

on the Institute of sex research.

20,000 books and journals and 5,000 images were destroyed.

They seized the Institute's list of names and addresses.

Last time I saw Dr Hirschfeld was during my operation.

He remained an exile during one of his travels

and since then I have not had any news.

Nothing has remained in the Institute.

We don't exist anymore.

From today I have no identity, I've lost it definitively.

I knew that night was going to be the moment

when the sky would be stained with blood.

[Pompous classical music]

I can truthfully say I am a new person,

at least I believe it.

But in the meantime the world has changed.

The city seems to be assailed by monsters

that I've only ever seen in paintings.

But hell is not an image, it's a feeling.

Hell is deep within us.

Is there still room in this world for me?

The sun shines

and Hitler has become the king of the city.

Every day I go to the hospital in vain.

It's the only place left where Jews can still take refuge.

I always hope to find names of friends and Rudolf

among the list of patients, but it never seems to happen.

My presence did not pass unnoticed

and today the director, Dr Lustig,

unexpectedly offered me employment as secretary

for a special program within the hospital.

I decided to accept.

It seemed to me

the only way to make sense of the days of my new life.

I compile lists to choose those

who receive certificates of exemption from work.

A medical commission chaired by Lustig

visits dozens of patients every day.

Many ambulances take the sick and crippled to a clinic

where they will stay until they're healed.

Now, all the older people and the infirm

clinch to the hope of these exams.

[Officer] At the behest of Eichmann, you'll have to

participate actively in the program "Aktion T4".

[Lustig] Let me know how we can help our nation.

[Officer] You'll offer medical examinations to patients

to prove their inability to work.

Those who pass it will be part of a special list,

from which we'll select guinea pigs for our program of

the suppression of those suffering from genetic diseases.

We plan to use the others in the work camps in the East.

[Lustig] We'll do our best to satisfy Colonel Eichmann.

[Melancholic classical music]

[People screaming]

Good morning, Miss. A list of a new category of people

indicated by the Police.

They come from prisons for violating Article 175.

They'll also participate in a rehabilitation treatment

and we'll visit them before their departure.

[People screaming]

I have nothing more to lose

and I have so much damage to repair.

[Meryl] Hello, I'm calling to have more information

about the diary I received.

Is there a telephone number?

...Is it possible to have some information?

...Thanks a lot.

Is it you?

I recognise you. Why are you here?

I'm sorry to disturb you. The diary is interrupted,

I wanted to find out how Alexandra's story ended.

So I followed the address on the envelope.

Come with me. You must see a place.

[Hilde] I personally met Alexandra

when she gave me her diary while working at the Jewish Hospital.

After she discovered that Rudolf and others were destined

for Dachau concentration camp,

she could not remain indifferent.

[Hilde] Alexandra was passing the English Consulate

and saw a long line of Jews.

They were trying to get a visa to escape from Germany.

She then came into contact with Frank Foley.

He was responsible for visas,

he helped thousands of Jews to flee, granting them visas.

Alexandra starts to help him.

Along with Hubert Pollack, his collaborator,

she provided them in advance

with a list of Jewish patients in need of a visa.

Working at the hospital

she could get information about people who could still be saved

while waiting to be transferred to the concentration camps.

Foley once managed to enter the Sachsenhausen camp directly.

He was able to take out Gunter Powitzer

who'd violated the laws of Nuremberg:

he had an intimate relationship with a non-Jewish woman.

From this relationship, a child was born.

And that little girl was me.

I was 12 and with my mother we were at the Jewish Hospital

as if in Limbo.

We were waiting to be sent to the camp

or waiting for a miracle: to see my father.

And that miracle happened!

Foley was sent back to England,

but before he left, he could give us a visa for Palestine.

The hospital was no longer safe for Jews.

Only a few years ago

I became aware that a few months after we left

Alexandra was captured, interned

and she died here.

When Alexandra realised

that the moment of her end was coming too,

and knowing we would be saved,

she entrusted her diary to me and said...

"This diary is written with the tears of the heart,"

"invisible to the man who doesn't know how to listen."

"It's no longer of any use to me."

"Keep it."