The Devil's Arithmetic (1999 TV Movie)

Dustin Hoffman: Self (Introduces Film)

Quotes 

• Dustin Hoffman : One of the most rewarding things about being a parent is the cycle of education: you teach your children, and just as often, they teach you. Hello, I'm Dustin Hoffman, and along with Mimi Rogers, as producers and parents, we are proud to be involved in this special Showtime presentation of 'The Devil's Arithmetic'. It's a provocative film about how a teenage girl relives her family's Holocaust experience in a dramatically vivid and sometimes frightening way. When I first brought the script home, I learned from my 10-year-old daughter it was based on a popular children's book that she'd been reading at school. This story has touched the lives of young readers by making history come alive, combining harsh realities with the magical elements of fable, and as in the book there are scenes in the film that are disturbing; but they don't begin to show the full extent of the horror that took place during the Holocaust. Violence is often used as a way to entertain our children as fantasy without consequence, but the brutality and the inhumanity of the Holocaust were real, not fantasy, and they affect us today and they will affect us tomorrow as well. Indifference to hatred and prejudice take root and grow in impressionable minds and only the light of history can turn the horror of this 20th century into a profound lesson for our children. We must teach them to remember. I now invite you to share with me a young woman's extraordinary journey of discovery where friendship, love and courage are the rewards of caring for others where each day the faces of evil determine who will live, and who will die. The Devil's Arithmetic.