The Quality of Mercy (1994)

Original title

Hasenjagd - Vor lauter Feigheit gibt es kein Erbarmen

Directed by

Andreas Gruber

Genre

drama film

Country

Germany, Austria

Runtime

1h 46m

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 11 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In 1945 hundreds of prisoners escape from the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The SS and local civilians hunt them down in a brutal manhunt. Only 11 of the escapees survive until the war ends.

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What happens

The Quality of Mercy (original title: Hasenjagd – Vor lauter Feigheit gibt es kein Erbarmen) is a dramatization of the events surrounding the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd, a Nazi war crime that took place near Linz, in the Mühlviertel region of Upper Austria, just before the end of the Second World War. The film's original title translates as "Rabbit chase – for sheer cowardice, there is no mercy", a reference to the name given by the SS to the manhunt for the hundreds of prisoners who managed to escape from Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Nearly 500 tried to escape, over 300 made it to the nearby woods, and of those, just 11 managed to survive the three months until the war ended. Most were shot on the spot or beaten to death when they were found, 57 were returned to the camp. The film attracted 123,000 spectators in Austria, making it the most successful film of 1995. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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