WASHINGTON – WND is set to make its first major motion picture, about a Holocaust survivor, but it's focus won't be just on the horrors that happened. They will include what's "coming back."
Already aboard the team for the project are George Escobar, vice president of WND Films, and director Ken Carpenter. They are working on a feature film based on the book "Trapped in Hitler’s Hell: A Young Jewish Girl Discovers the Messiah's Faithfulness in the Midst of the Holocaust."
WND has started a GoFundMe page to help defray the startup costs of the exciting new film, available at https://www.gofundme.com/make-a-hit-movie-with-wnd.
An estimated $120,000 is needed to complete the initial investment package. Those funds will be enough to cover legal expenses, business operations, marketing plans and materials (promo reels, websites, posters, and press kits) as well as pre-production budgeting, scheduling, and location scouting. After this preliminary work is done, the film can be pitched to investors who will be able to fund the money necessary to begin the production and filming phase of the movie.
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"The math is simple," the GoFundMe page states. "If 2 percent of our WND audience of 6-8 million monthly visitors each donates $10 (that's less than two cappuccinos, or lattes, or mochas from Starbucks), we'll reach our film investor package goal of $120,000. If 10-15 percent of our audience donate, we can bypass the investors altogether, and make the movie immediately."
The movie has been in story development for two years already, with research, scripting and storyboarding already finished. The money raised on the GoFundMe page will be used to continue the pre-production process and pitch the film to investors.
"Trapped in Hitler's Hell" tells the story of Anita Dittman, a Jewish woman who survived 12 years under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
Escobar thinks that it is crucially important that this film get made.
"If we forget our history, ignore our mistakes ... we will suffer greatly by repeating them," he said on the GoFundMe page. "All the critical issues Anita faced in the 1930s and 40s are coming back."
He cited:
- Fake News being perpetrated like Nazi propaganda, undermining freedom.
- Persecution, not just of the Jews, but now of Christians as well.
- Security. People are trading away their liberty for a false sense of security, as Germans did, giving rise to Hitler.
- Faith in God is being tossed aside as irrelevant or used as a weapon to silence people of faith.
Anita Dittman was born to a Jewish mother and an atheist father, but a Lutheran pastor led her to Jesus Christ when she was not quite 7 years old, just as World War II was breaking out. Over the dark years that followed, she relied on her faith to help her through circumstances that left many others crushed.
First, she was forced to labor in a canning factory with her mother. Then the Gestapo took her mother away, and young Anita was forced to survive on starvation rations. Soon after, the Gestapo came for Anita and hauled her off to Barthold, a forced labor camp. She and a few of her fellow prisoners escaped but were later recaptured. Then she escaped again, this time for good.
But her troubles were not over, as she found herself in the middle of a street during the Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany. Yet, miraculously, Anita survived the bombing unharmed. She also survived a stay in a Nazi hospital, where a nurse tried to kill her by neglecting her leg wound.
The leg wound actually saved Anita from being raped. While hiding in a bomb shelter with fellow hospital patients, a crowd of Russian soldiers burst in and started raping female patients. Two of them grabbed Anita and threw her to the floor – but when they saw her mangled leg, they left her alone to look for a more appealing victim.
When Anita finally was discharged from the hospital, she was told she wouldn't walk normally for a year. Her Nazi doctors had not given her a cane or crutches, and she still had to travel a long way to find out if her mother was alive or dead. She put her fate in God's hands.
"I stepped out [of the hospital] and I said, 'Lord, I don't have a cane. I don't have a crutch. I don't know where I'm going. All I want is to find my mother, so lead me, guide me, and hold onto me. Be my crutch,'" Dittman told WND. "And He was! I started to walk normally within a week, but I sure had to lean on Christ. And I lean on Christ yet, but not just for walking, but for my life."
In 2015, Dittman was given the first-ever "Heroine of the Faith: Crown of Life Award" from the Bott Radio Network at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, Tennessee.
If you would like to donate to help get this film off the ground, you can do so at this link: https://www.gofundme.com/make-a-hit-movie-with-wnd.