In June 1939 the fate of a German Pastor was decided when he refused to serve in Hitler's army should he be drafted. This meant certain execution. In addition to his refusing the draft, he chose to resist the government treatment of Jews. He was among the earliest and most vocal non-Jewish Germans to resist Hitler's government. How did he arrive at this clarity of sight, and strength of resolve before nearly all of his fellow German citizens?

This documentary, "The Cloud of Witnesses: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Harlem 1930/31" focuses on a moment in his life that has often gone unnoticed. From the Fall 1930 to the Summer of 1931 Bonhoeffer was a post-doctoral student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. While there he made life-long friendships, and had life-altering experiences. He found himself in the midst of significant historical moments in the United States. He was young (celebrated his 25th birthday midway through the year), impressionable, brilliant and determined. He was there in New York specifically to find a cloud of witnesses to help him see a gospel expression that meant more than compartmentalized religion, or abstract theology. Several years after his return from his year of study in New York he described that time as "having the greatest significance" for him "up to the present day." His friendships and experiences there set him on the path of direct opposition to Nazism.

In 2014 Dr. Reggie Williams published a book about Bonhoeffer and his experience in Harlem „Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus“. (His book was the inspiration for this film and is the source for the facts in the next two passages.)

After World War I many Afro-Americans migrated to the North, were they found work and earned more money than in the South. In the Southern States lynchings were common. Between 1880 and World War II more than 4.700 lynchings happend in the USA, 73 % of the victims were Black. During that period of time 3.245 Black were killed by Whites in the South.

As all Blacks the members of the Abyssinian Baptist Church had been hit very hard by the great depression the year before Bonhoeffer arrived. At the same time a New Black cultural awareness arose in music, painting and writing. Bonhoeffer read many books of the “Harlem Renaissance“. He even wrote an essay about them, which has been lost. In the Bonhoeffer archive at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is a list of books of the “Harlem Renaissance“ and there are quotes and other references in his writings and we know the list of books he had to read for a seminar at Union Theological Seminary. Furthermore Bonhoeffer collected records of spirituals. Later he played those to his students in Finkenwalde. His experience in Harlem changed him and his theology that later had such an important effect on the liberation theology in South Amerika and South Africa.

Four years after Dietrich Bonhoeffer 'studied' and wrote about American racism, the antisemitic Nuremberg laws become laws in 1935. James Q. Whitman, Professor in Yale has proven in his book “Hitler's American Model“ that the Nazis studied American race laws. They took them as a model for marginalization and outlawing the Jews. This open state racism should not be confound with the holocaust. In November 1937 Joseph Goebbels had claimed:“ We must get the Jews out of Germany, out of Europe.“ Followed by the first deportations to Poland and the November pogroms. In Summer 1939 Dietrich Bonhoeffer travels to New York again...

This film is about his formative experiences during his year of study in 1930/31. In our documentary we want to tell how Dietrich Bonhoeffer became such a determined opponent of injustice. In addition we are interested in the influence that his life and theology continues to have in and outside Germany until today.