‘The Keeper’ Features a Soccer Star, a Rabbi and War Guilt  

It is fitting that “The Keeper,” set post-World War II when people and nations across the globe were groping for a new normalcy, is opening in the Los Angeles area in the virtual format that has become our new reality.

The title of the German-British movie refers to the goalkeeper on a soccer team — a sport known everywhere except in the United States as football.

It is the world’s most popular sport, but for Angelenos who aren’t bitten by the bug, the film offers additional points of interest.

The film, directed by Germany’s Marcus H. Rosenmuller, is based on the life of German-born Bert Trautmann (David Kross). A former decorated paratrooper in Hitler’s army, he is now a British prisoner of war, who dazzles his captors with his prowess as a goalkeeper.

There also is a love story between Trautmann and a patriotic English woman. Perhaps most interestingly, the film asks whether those who stood idly by in the face of Nazi crimes can ever be forgiven by the victims or, perhaps, by their own consciences?

We first meet Trautmann in 1947 in a POW camp (tens of thousands of prisoners voluntarily remained in the U.K. prisons after the war), where the British guards freely express their hatred of the “Krauts.” Yet, in a pickup game with members of a local town team, Trautmann displays his amazing agility as a goalkeeper, to the delight of the team’s coach, desperate to win a game with his team of losers.

Later, we see Trautmann follow his dreams of becoming a professional football player in Manchester, England, but he continues to draw ire from area residents until a local rabbi comes to his rescue by writing a newspaper column insisting that each man must be judged on his personal worth.

Soccer is becoming more popular in the United States, (spurred by a champion U.S. women’s team and a professional men’s league) and has come a long way since this reporter, who was born in Germany, played on the UCLA soccer team in 1946, when there wasn’t a single American-born player on the roster.

“Trautmann was not a hero in any sense, but after the war he worked to make sure that English and German youth would never shoot at each other again.” —  Marcus H. Rosenmuller

Still, it is difficult to imagine the emotional investment fans in other countries have in their soccer teams. For comparison, one would have to combine the collective enthusiasm of American baseball, basketball and football fans for their teams.

So, in 1956, when Manchester City qualified for England’s Football Association Cup against Birmingham City — akin to the World Series in U.S. baseball — the city and fans went wild.

Rosenmuller, who scored his first successes with movies in his native Bavarian dialect, saved the film’s more serious themes for the end of the movie, which he discussed in a phone interview with the Journal.

One theme, which pervades any serious discussion with Germans today — more than 75 years after World War II ended — is the nation’s guilt, not only for the Holocaust but for its pervasive series of war crimes. So just as the film seems to be hurtling toward a happy Hollywood ending, Rosenmuller turns to the darkest chapter in German history. Trautmann, the football hero, has to confront his service in a German parachute unit in the brutal fighting in the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. Although not a war criminal, Trautmann is among the legions of bystanders who witnessed Hitler’s madness and evil but refused to protest and intervene.

The director notes one incident (not shown in the film) in which Trautmann’s comrades executed 50 Jews in the Ukraine, but then swore everyone — including Trautmann — to silence. “Trautmann was not a hero in any sense, but after the war he worked to make sure that English and German youth would never shoot at each other again,” Rosenmueller said.

Trautmann’s confrontation with his past comes at the very end of the film, when he suffers a personal tragedy. The shattered soccer star tells his wife it was his punishment for not intervening when his comrades killed the Jews.

After the end of World War II, the German people — as much of the rest of the world — were in denial or indifferent to the extent and toll of the Holocaust, but gradually, the postwar generations have acknowledged the guilt, not only of the perpetrators but also of the bystanders who turned their backs.

“The Keeper” begins streaming at Laemmle theaters on Oct. 2. Visit the website. For a direct link to the film, click here.