Depressing? You want depressing? Try Disney's One Magic Christmas. I love that movie too, but apparently I'm in a significant minority. Didn't realize that until I gave it to a co-worker for the family to watch. Pretty religious family. But it had Santa, a Christmas Angel, and it's a Disney movie. . .what's not to like? Holy crap - did I ever get the 3rd degree. Not to blow the story if you've not seen it, but Disney kills off a parent all the time. It's part of their mojo. For the record, Harry Dean Stanton is the best Christmas. Angel. Ever.
George making "violent love" to Mary in their parlor is one of my favorite -chuckle- scenes. And then there's Uncle Billy's squirrel - I always thought that was odd until I learned that squirrels were once a common household pet. #1 Christmas movie.
-chuckle- In the local vernacular I will always be From Away. I discovered the The Way Life Should Be back in the 80s and then got here as soon as I could.
-chuckle- Kinda like Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. You lovingly watch it for years, looking forward to it each time, until one day all of a sudden you're like - WTF?
What a story (I went right to the long version). I love stuff like this that continues to come to light from WWII. And yeah - this his got movie/limited series written all over it.
For the record, Miss C beat you to this over on her site with a post from https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/r3o8jw/i_honestly_cant_explain_this/ A lot of redditors are saying fake. Except they can't explain the cat. If you watch the pole as the sign falls you'll see what appears to be someone's arm move through the bottom of the frame so the three weren't exactly alone. Based on that I'm thinking this was staged. Also the reddit consensus for location is Egypt.