Found at: http://www.yclusa.org/article/articleprint/1675/-1/301/

Movie Review: Olga: Revolutionary and Martyr

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Dynamic Magazine

Back Issues

2005 - March

Author: Adam Zerdeja

Publishing date: 15.03.2005 18:39

Olga: Revolutionary and Martyr
by Fernando Morais • Translated by Ellen Watson
(Grove Press)

At the age of nineteen, Olga Benario led a daring prison break at Moabit Prison in Berlin, Germany. She commanded a small band of young communists to free her lover, communist intellectual Otto Bauer.

The year was 1928 and the strengthening Nazi movement increasingly overshadowed the culture of the Weimar Republic. Professor Bauer was a political prisoner who faced years in prison following a sham trial. The Communist Party of Germany ordered Olga and her comrades into action to save one of their key leaders.

The bold unarmed prison raid gained Olga national fame, the enmity of the Nazi Party and self-imposed exile in the Soviet Union.

Thus begins Fernando Morais’s Olga: Revolutionary and Martyr, a biography that uses meticulously researched documents and eyewitness interviews to tell the heroic
and sad story of Olga Benario Prestes. Olga joins the ranks of Elena Poniatowska’s Tinisima and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies as a triumphant untold true-life tale of a young woman revolutionary.

Morais’ book was originally published in Brazil in 1985 and then in the U.S. and Canada—translated from the Portuguese by Ellen Watson—in 1990. The book was re-released in 2004 to coincide with the release of the new movie based on the book by Brazilian director Jayme Monjardim. The movie Olga had the biggest opening weekend in Brazil last year and is scheduled for US release sometime in 2005.

While the story of Olga Benario Prestes is virtually unknown in the US, the story of the woman affectionately known simply as ‘Olga’ is the stuff of legend in Germany and Brazil.

Olga became a part of Brazilian history after being sent there by the Communist International to act as the bodyguard of Brazilian military leader and communist rebel Luís Carlos Prestes, who had been in exile in Moscow since 1928.

In Brazil the fascist Vargas dictatorship and agents of the Nazi Gestapo secret police hounded Olga and Prestes following the failure of the 1934 popular-democratic uprising. Prestes was eventually jailed and Olga—then seven months pregnant with Prestes’ child—was deported back to Nazi Germany.

One of the few shortcomings of the book is the almost complete absence of Olga from the core chapters of the book during the Brazilian uprising and the dark days that followed. Morais commits himself to only telling only the verifiable and documented happenings in Olga’s life. Because of the lack of such documents during Olga’s time living underground in Brazil, Olga is unfortunately left out of a good chunk of the book.

Nonetheless, Olga is a wonderful and educational book. It not only tells the story of Olga Benario Prestes, but also of many people who resisted fascist repression when it threatened to conquer the world. Olga is a universal tale of courage and truth versus terror and lies told through the life of a young communist woman. The book is an inspiration for all young people who are committed to the fight against the growing power of the right wing today.

For more information about the movie:
www.jaymemonjardim.com.br

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