Hidden in plain sight: Jewish children and the holocaust in Fred Zinnemann's the Search (1948)

The Search, Fred Zinnemann’s 1948 film about displaced and orphaned children, has long sat on the periphery of Holocaust film. Although it has an important Jewish character—a boy who survived the war by hiding his identity—the heart of the film centers on a non-Jewish child. However, the film’s explicitly Jewish material is only the most visible aspect of its interest in Jewish children and the Holocaust. To a large extent, the film’s efforts to address the Holocaust are submerged—or, more accurately, became submerged over the course of its production. Drawing on a rich body of sources, this essay revisits The Search’s treatment of the Holocaust, examining how the film openly addresses the murder of European Jewry and how it elides and suppresses this history.