Famed German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta has said that she has struggled all her life to understand why the "good Germans" were silent during her country's darkest hours in World War II.

Her film Rosenstrasse is a personal response of sorts to that issue. The film tells the story of what happened in 1943 on Berlin's Rosenstrasse, a street where Jewish men were being held prior to deportation to camps -- and how a peaceful protest by the non-Jewish wives of these men eventually saw the men released. The little-known incident is described by one character in Rosenstrasse as being, "Only a small ray of light," but von Trotta's film reiterates that it is better to light that one candle than curse the darkness, and so forth.
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