Professor David Peimer
Can Film Represent the Holocaust?

Professor David Peimer - Can Film Represent the Holocaust?

- This is quite a complicated and difficult topic for me. Emotionally, I guess a little bit, you know, how do we represent the Holocaust in film? Can we represent it? Should we represent it? Difference between documentary and fiction, or the very contemporary approach, which we can call docufiction for want of a better phrase at the moment. Taking elements which are documentary and obviously using fictional techniques. And I don’t claim to have an easy answer to this debate at all, but what I want to do today is I’m going to show clips of seven films about the Holocaust, radically different films. And I’ve chosen these quite thoughtfully because I think that they represent the essence of this debate and can we and how do we, if we do, show or represent the Holocaust in a 90 minute, two hour, two and a half hour film with all the dramatic theatrical requirements of film, protagonist, antagonist, lighting, shades of light, obviously actors, extras, you know, all of that. Yet something based on the most horrific and evil crime in human history. So the debate is twofold. The one is, how are these works shown? And secondly, should we, can we? And what happens if we don’t show any representation of the Holocaust, other than in perhaps strict what might be called documentary with no poetic licence? But I want to argue that even documentary has poetic licence because there’s always editing involved. There is closeup shots, long shots, what one chooses from a mountain of material. One may have 50, 60, 80 hours of material cut to a 55 minute documentary, who chooses?

Why, how, what’s the focus? There’s always an angle in, and documentary itself is using film theatrical techniques of, to be really honest, entertainment and ways of using the medium of film to represent it. So bearing that in mind, I’ve chosen not to show documentaries except for one. And I’m going to show the so-called more fictional films except for the one by Claude Lanzmann, but it’s a discussion with Lanzmann and how we’ll do it. And then I’m going to come later to what’s become known in a way as the Lanzmann Schindler debate. And not to be pro or anti either of them and I’m really not trying to sit on the fence. I want to drill down to the essence of, the nuance of this very complex debate. And with the Schindler Lanzmann debate, you know, is the obvious how we fictionalise an event based on historical fact and poetic licence by Steven Spielberg or the Lanzmann approach with his no fictional representation of anything. It’s just interviews with survivors of the Holocaust. So we have the two ends of the spectrum, as it were, and then a whole range in between. Okay, and the question that it also I think provokes for me is how do we represent memory and memory of a particular group, memory from a global historical event, memory of extreme, the most grotesque horror known to humanity, memory of which then goes on the spectrum of representation of memory. How do we represent that in our, it’s got to be a contemporary imagination? Making a film of something that comes out of memory, memory of a group, a nation, a religion, a smaller group, a larger group.

And how is that done in film? Because obviously so many films are based in some event that may have happened, however much they take poetic licence or not. So these are all the angles, if one likes, of this huge and endless debate that’s been going on for, you know, 60, 70, 80 years, even longer, going on since the First World War, in fact, you know, how to represent these events and what would happen if we didn’t choose to represent, which is an important question that I’m going to come to. Okay, so that’s the overall framework of some of the questions I’m going to look at today. And it is a very sensitive topic. It’s a very, very complicated and profoundly traumatic, obviously, a set of questions that it provokes, and I hope I can give it that sensitivity it accords. So if we go on to the first slide, please. So this is first of all to begin this discussion. Primo Levi, “The gap between things as they were down there "and things as they are represented "by the current imagination.” And in one sentence, Primo gets it completely. The gap between things how they were and things as are represented by the imagination. He understands completely imagination, poetic licence, how memory is recalled, what’s left out, what’s kept in, and so on. Just words, oral testimony, witness to the event. All these things come from, I think what Primo sums up in one brilliant sentence. I mentioned the Lanzmann Spielberg debate, which we’ll come to. Elie Wiesel, “Like Kafka’s unfortunate messenger, "he realises,” talking about the survivor or himself, “that this message, "his message has been neither received nor transmitted "or worse it has been, and nothing has changed.

"It has produced no effect on society or on human nature.” I think it’s a profound insight of Elie Wiesel because regardless whether we go the documentary approach or the fictional, the docufiction, or the different range of approaches in film or in novels or literature, books, poetry. You know, he realises this, the survivor realises message has neither been received nor transmitted or worse, nothing has changed. The terrifying, terrifying possible truth, just produce no effect to change society, to change choices societies make, or on the very nature of human nature, the terrifying, but I think very insightful comment of Elie Wiesel. And we need to bear this in mind because from the survivor perspective, and I have to use my imagination here, I think he’s trying to get to the trauma of the survivor later that he’s alluding to in himself and perhaps some people that he knew also survivors. And what a terrifying thought. You know, what can we learn from history? What can we learn from representations in fiction, in art, in literature? Does the “Guernica” teach us anything more about stopping war? Does Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream?” Does Primo Levi’s books? Even Elie Wiesel, et cetera, the books, aside from film. Adorno, he was one of the great, today we’d call him probably a cultural, philosophical, cultural figure who escaped the Nazis not Jewish. And as I’m sure many know, went to live in New York and he would certainly had been killed because he was an intellectual, you know, certainly against, actually against the Nazis. “Suffering has as much right to expression "as a tortured man has to scream. "Hence, it may have been wrong to say "that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poetry.” Because Adorno had this phrase, “It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.” And that phrase has gone down in the last 70, 80 years of an enormous amount of artistic and intellectual debate. Can one write poetry after the barbarism of Auschwitz?

To paraphrase Adorno. And this is a change in his position to later when he talks about suffering in the tortured man, the scream, the shot, the cry, whatever he statement. And then Elie Wiesel again, “Auschwitz is a universe outside the universe, "a creation that exists parallel to creation.” So he’s saying the Holocaust exists as something outside, it is parallel to creation, the extent of the evil, the extent of the horror and the destruction. That’s quite a powerful position and quite a powerful thought-provoking question or statement that he has here. Because if it is outside the universe, what is it? How do we see it? How can we represent it? And the bigger question, what happens if we don’t represent it and leave it only to the history books? Okay, I want to go onto the next slide in one moment. And this is the first film I’m going to show, which is a clip from the 1961 movie “Judgement at Nuremberg,” which for me, one of the great screenwriters of all time, Abby Mann working with Stanley Kramer, the wonderful director, two Jewish guys, and Abby Mann wrote the script starring Spencer. There was Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, and a very young Maximilian Schell. And this is one clip, and basically for those who perhaps don’t remember it well enough, the film is fundamentally about Spencer Tracy as an American judge sent to Nuremberg in 1945, ‘46 and he and other judges are there to sit on judgement on the German judges who paid allegiance to the Nazis to remain judges during the Nazi era and he has to pass judgement . Spencer Tracy’s character passed judgement on those judges. Were they just carrying out the law? Interpreting the law as judges are meant to do, and they have no input into making the laws, they just carry them out? The old argument of carry out orders, et cetera. And the film is a brilliant piece of writing and acting. And this is one scene that I want to show.

• Are you aware that sexual sterilisation was not invented by national socialism, but had been advanced for years before as a weapon in dealing with the mentally incompetent and the criminal?

• Yes, I’m aware of that.

• Are you aware that it has advocates among leading citizens in many other countries?

• I am not an expert on such laws.

• Then permit me to read one to you. This is a high court opinion upholding such laws in existence in another country. And I quote, “We have seen more than once that a public welfare "may call upon the best citizens for their lives. "It would be strange indeed if it could not call upon those "who already sapped the strength of the state "for these lesser sacrifices "in order to prevent our being swamped by incompetence. "It’s better for all the world "if instead of waiting to execute "degenerate offsprings for crime "or to let them suffer for their imbecility society "can prevent their propagation "by medical means in the first place. "Three generations of imbeciles or none.” You recognise it now, Dr. Wieck?

• No sir, I don’t.

• Actually, there is no particular reason you should since the opinion of sterilisation law in the state of Virginia of the United States and was written and delivered by that great American jurist, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Now, Dr. Wieck, in view of what you have just learned, can you still say that sexual sterilisation was a novel national socialist measure?

• Yes, I can say it because it was never before used as a weapon against political opponents.

• Do you personally know of a case where someone was sterilised for political reasons?

• [Dr. Wieck] I know that such things were done.

• That’s not the question. Please answer the question. Do you know of a case?

• I don’t know of any specific case or specific date.

• I am asking you if you have any firsthand personal knowledge of such a case!

• No, I have no such personal knowledge.

• Thank you. Dr. Wieck, you are aware of the charges and the indictment against Ernst Janning?

• Yes, I am.

• Can you honestly say he’s responsible for them?

• Yes, I can.

• Do you consider yourself free of responsibility?

• Yes, I do.

• Dr. Wieck, did you ever swear to the Civil Servant Loyalty Oath of 1934?

• Your Honour, I object. The witness doesn’t have to answer that question. He’s not on trial.

• All of Germany’s on trial, Your Honour. This tribunal placed it on trial when it placed Ernst Janning on trial. If responsibility is to be found, the widest latitude is to be permit.

• Objection overruled.

• Did you ever swear to the Civil Servant Loyalty Oath of 1934?

• Everyone did.

• We are not interested in what everyone did. We are interested in what you did. Would you read the oath from the Reich Law Gazette March, 1933?

• I swear that I shall be obedient to the leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, that I shall be loyal to him, that I will observe the laws and that I will conscientiously fulfil my duties, so help me God.

• Everyone swore to it. It was mandatory.

• Yes, but you are such a perceptive man, Dr. Wieck. You could see what was coming. You could see that national socialism was leading Germany to disaster. It was clear to anyone who had eyes and ears. Didn’t you realise what it would have meant if you, it men like you would have refused to swear to the oath? It would have meant that Hitler could never have come to absolute power. Why didn’t you? Dr. Wieck, why didn’t you? Can you give us an explanation? Has it something to do with your pension?

• Okay, so just to hold it there for a moment. First of all, I think the writing is brilliant. “Judgement at Nuremberg,” and it’s made in 1961, so it’s not, you know, 16 years after the end of the war. And he’s looking at the judges and their role. And of course the question of culpability responsibility. If everybody had to swear to this, well, is the individual responsible or not? And for me, a very important approach to individual versus group responsibility for something like this, you know, everybody had to sign it. It was mandatory, you know, well, was it or wasn’t it? So it goes to the question of culpability. It goes to the question of individual versus social and legal mass responsibility. And not only is the writing brilliant for me, Maximilian Schell, the young Austrian Swiss actor, he wins an an Oscar for this. And it shows something of the deep passion inside him. You almost sense there’s something scary in the way he’s acting this and I think it’s very, very conscious, you know, that he comes out with these vitriolic outbursts. But all Germany is on trial. All these phrases by a Jewish writer trying to grapple with the very big picture of mass and individual culpability for what happened. So for me, in this and it’s set in a trial, it’s based on some of the trials that happened that we all know about the judges, but it’s again, you know, taken from historical events and fictionalised into film. And I think so thought provoking, emotionally gripping, using the techniques of theatre and film protagonist, antagonist, dramatic buildup of suspense, release of suspense, the lighting, the shade, the colours, how the black and white is used everywhere and so on. So all these techniques to make as evocative a film as possible fictional techniques to try and represent a theme, an idea of such complex and historical importance about an historical event, but nevertheless, ultimately fiction.

Okay, so the next one is from one of the films that I love the most as well, from “Ship of Fools” 1965, also written by Abby Mann. Same writer, same director Stanley Kramer. And as I’m sure many know Vivian Leigh and other very big name actors and they’re all on board an ocean liner bound for Germany from Mexico in 1933. We know what’s going to come at the end, where all the Jewish passengers are going to be taken off and we know what’s going to happen to them and we know what’s going to happen to the non-Jewish passengers on the ship. So written in 1965, we know the end result. But it is so well written. And there are a couple of complex themes and I’m going to show something which I think is perhaps surprising. The first clip that I want to show is, well, the clip I want to show is from a moment of impending doom, clouding fading love 'cause love pervades this film together with the larger themes of the horror to come and the Jews and the non-Jew, Jewish Germans who are bound on the ship from Mexico to Germany. And this scene, I think with Vivian Leigh is quite extraordinary and one of the great moments for me of theatre of film, and I’m going to link it afterwards to the context of our discussion. If you can show it, please.

• You are not young, Mrs. Treadwell. You have not been young for years. Behind those old eyes, you hide a 16 year old heart. Fool. Is that what men really find attractive? Hmm. Oh. Baby, you just have managed to grow a home. Mrs. Treadwell of Murray Hill, Virginia. Now. You can paint your toenails green. You know how it ends, don’t you? Alone. Sitting in a cafe. A paid escort. Let me go! Let me go!

• Mrs. Treadwell? Oh, excuse me, That greaser told me cabin 14, excuse me. Excuse me.

• Get out! Get out! Get out!

• Now, I’m sorry. I truly am sorry. I didn’t know, I was just-

• Pig!

• Hey, what the hell?

• Go on, get out!

• What?

• Get out! Get out! Get out! Beast! Go, go!

• So if we can hold it there please. So, Mrs. Treadwell, Vivian Leigh is a divorcee. She drinks, she flirts on a quest. She’s on a quest to recapture her lost youth when she was once in Paris. But it’s not only that, I think it’s about lost youth, it’s lost innocence. There’s overall in the film and through her character, a sense of impending doom, impending disaster, a great loss and a terrible experience to come in her own personal life with health and what happens to her with the young doctor and other things. I don’t think I’m, well, I hope I’m not stretching the metaphor too far, but this idea of love and lost love romantic is about to be smashed to smithereens by what’s coming in the war. And the age of irony, the age of cynicism, the age of so many things that’ll come because of the war afterwards. For me, I think, and Abby Mann is writing it, of course, since what he’s, they’re filming it in 1965. But I think he’s trying to prefigure that sense through, you know, love, love story, of the ageing character of Mrs. Treadwell. And also what is the role of the personal love in context of 1933 and all the ship of fools, the ship that is forced to go back to Germany with the Jewish characters. We know what’s going to happen. And with the non-Jewish German characters who know what’ll happen in Americans and others. So there’s this remarkable sense of ominous foreboding with glimpses of hope in a way.

And I think it’s an attempt to go back into memory and imagine then 1933, what it might have been like to be, why is it called “Ship of Fools?” You know, the very title, it’s from Katherine Anne Porter’s novel, “Ship of Fools.” And in the opening speech we have, and I’m going to invert it, we can’t use the word, but a dwarf who, and he is the fool or the trickster or the character with like the fool in Shakespeare in King Lear, who has all the insight and the wisdom, but cannot change events. And he says, “My name is Carl Glocken and this is a ship of fools. "I’m a fool and you’ll meet more fools as we go along. "This ship is packed with them. "Lovers, ladies of joy, tolerant Jews, dwarfs of all kinds. "And who knows, if you look closely enough, "you may even find yourself on board the ship of fools,” and Abby Mann, I think using the metaphor for what’s coming. And not everybody can be Einstein and you know, you’ll see what’s coming. So it’s a very different kind of, now there’s one part that I wanted to quote from it. If we go onto the next slide, please. So these are the two, the Jewish guy, sorry, this is the two characters discussing. We are Germans first and Jews second. There’re a half a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us. Of course Abby Mann is writing this in 1965. Then Mary Treadwell, Vivien Leigh character. “Tell me, wouldn’t it unnerve you "to have an affair with me?” How do we combine the personal and the horrific historical macro picture to come? And then for me, the great six lines of the fool amongst them.

With Bieber, Rieber, sorry, is one of the main characters, and he’s a German nationalist. Lowenthal speaking to the Jewish guy, Lowenthal. “You know, it’s an historical fact "that the Jews are the basis of our misfortunes.” Lowenthal’s Jewish. “Of course.” Rieber, “You agree?” Lownethal, “Of course. The Jews and the bicycle riders.” Rieber, “The bicycle riders? Why the bicycle riders?” Lowenthal, “Why the Jews?” I think it’s such brilliant ironic writing from Abby Mann, you know, and in six lines he gets it, of how to turn an historical event into, through fiction and brilliant writing into something. Of course, historical fact, Jews are the basis of the misfortune. Yes, Jews and bicycle riders. And when you read that, I don’t think you can ever be the same afterwards because you’re forced to think why blame the Jews, the scapegoat, the site would say for everything. So again, with great writers acting, trying to imagine a 1933 ship going, and the characters imagined going back to Germany, Jewish and non-Jewish, and what might they be speaking and how as Primo Levy says, through the imagination, trying to look at memory. I find it a very nuanced approach. Okay, now, the next film I’m going to show for me, one of the greatest films ever made. 1964, Sidney Lumet directed and Rod Steiger in the performance of his life, “The Pawnbroker” and in essence, the story and his wife raped and killed by the Germans in the camps. 25 years later, he runs a pawnshop in Harlem in Manhattan. He works with a young guy called Jesus Ortiz, who’s a young ambitious Puerto Rican character who idolises the older Jew, the young guy works for him, okay? And we’ll show this little clip.

• Teaching time, Mr. Nazerman. Time to teach. Now, last time you taught me gold, right? What are you going to teach me tonight?

• Tonight I teach you to save your penny.

• How you going to do that, Mr. Nazerman? Yes, sir. And in the meantime, I’m learning business from my master, right? So I got to know one thing, something I’ve been thinking about, say how come you people come to business so natural?

• You people? Oh, I see, yeah. I see, I see, you… You want to learn the secret of our success. Is that right? All right, I’ll teach you. First of all, you start off with a period of several thousand years during which you have nothing to sustain you, but a great bearded legend. Oh my friend, you have no land to call your own, to grow food on or to hunt. You have nothing. You’re never in one place long enough to have a geography or an army or a land myth. All you have is a little brain, a little brain, and a great bearded legend to sustain you and convince you that you are special even in poverty. But this, this little brain that’s the real key, you see. With this little brain, you go out and you buy a piece of cloth and you cut that cloth in two, and you go out and sell it for a penny more than you paid for it. Then you run right out and buy another piece of cloth, cut it into three pieces and sell it for three pennies profit. But my friend, during that time, you must never succumb to buying an extra piece of bread for the table or a toy for a child, no. You must immediately run out and get yourself a still larger piece of cloth. And so you repeat this process over and over and suddenly you discover something. You have no longer any desire, any temptation to dig into the earth, to grow food or to gaze at a limitless land and call it your own. No, no. You just go on and on and on, repeating this process over the centuries, over and over. And suddenly you make a grand discovery. You have a mercantile heritage. You are a merchant, you are known as a user, a man with secret resources, a witch, a pawnbroker, a sheenie, a makie, and a kike!

• You’re really some teacher, Mr. Nazerman. You’re really, really the greatest.

• Okay, if we can hold it there, going to hold this clip there.

• Good afternoon.

• Thanks. So I wanted to show that just that short speech where I think it’s such a brilliant speech, the bearded legends, we all know what they are, you know, the stories from the Bible and elsewhere and you know, he’s trying to keep it within the character describing, you know, so many of the themes which we are all familiar with. Well, what is interesting about this is, I mean, Quincy Jones did the music and very early on in his career and the New York Times wrote an interesting critical response that the character, the Jewish character, is a survivor of Nazi persecution who has become detached in the modern world. He is a shadow of the ageless wandering Jew. Now, is he or isn’t he? What kind of survivor? A fighter, a shadow, the ageless wandering Jew, something else? Is he really that bitter? Is he really? Et cetera, and so many complicated questions arise, but I find in Rod Steiger’s performance and in the writings, all these questions are not answered. And I don’t think it’s the role to answer it. I don’t think it’s the role of art to answer, you know, these profound questions, but to stimulate more questions in us and make us become aware and educate us, learn.

Let’s see, Kubrick, Franco Zeffirelli writes, they all turned it down to direct for all various reasons. It was the first American film to try and recreate something of the horror of the camps. And it’s important from that not only historical perspective, but the first to try and take on such an extreme, absolutely huge momentous event in history. Rod Steiger was interesting. He said that his inspiration for the character came from spending endless hours looking at Picasso’s 1937 painting “Guernica,” and in particular, there’s one scream, a silent anguish of a woman’s cries suffering. If you look carefully at the painting and it’s a silent cry, it’s not quite as direct obviously as Edvard Munch, but if you look carefully, there’s a silent scream and anguish almost together in the face. And that’s what inspired him to try and, you know, as a way in for the character. It’s now bizarrely the American censors of the time tried to block it because they had a little moment of nudity, not because it’s about the horror, the evil of the camps and history, et cetera. But because it has a second or two, a little bit of nudity, I mean the extraordinary obsession of the late and middle 20th century and later times, you know, it’s the nudity, it’s not all the other stuff, which I find extraordinary. Okay, I wanted you to go onto the next one, which has endlessly provoked a profound set of questions. And this is the TV series “Holocaust” made in 1978 with Meryl Streep. It was a four-part TV series.

• [Announcer] Schindler’s List is considered one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Now only one other film of this magnitude has received such critical acclaim, “Holocaust.”

• We’ll solve a multitude of problems simply by attacking Jews.

• [Announcer] It’s an extraordinary story of courage and heroism against the odds as seen through the lives of two unforgettable families.

• We’re all friends here. All good Berliners.

• [Announcer] Torn apart by the devastation of war.

• Things won’t get easier for you.

• How much worse can they get? We’re no longer citizens. We have no legal rights. Property can be confiscated. In the name of humanity, what else can you do to us?

• [Announcer] One struggles against oppression.

• What has he done? Why are you taking him?

• Routine questioning.

• No, no, no. What is his crime? What has he done?

• [Announcer] The other allies with Hitler.

• I respect the party and the work the fuhrer is doing.

• [Announcer] Winner of eight prestigious Emmy awards.

• Try again. What crime did you commit?

• I have done nothing.

• [Announcer] And the critics agree. “Holocaust” is one of the most powerful films ever made.

• This is my country as much as theirs. I do not fear those barbarians.

• [Announcer] Riveting, fascinating, an uncommonly valuable achievements says Time Magazine.

• I am still not convinced they intend to kill us all!

• Please, tell your wife. If you don’t, I will kill him.

• [Announcer] And the New York Post says, every American family should see “Holocaust.”

• The trains aren’t going to Russia.

• Where are they going?

• Treblinka.

• Another Polish work camp?

• It’s a death camp.

• [Announcer] Featuring a brilliant all-star cast.

• Please, go back! I’ll be all right!

• [Announcer] Including two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep.

• The rabbis say that every life is a sanctification.

• [Announcer] James Woods of “The Getaway” and Oscar nominee for “Salvador,” Michael Moriarty of “Pale Rider” and “Law and Order.” Joseph Bottoms of “Inner Sanctum” and “Blind Date,” David Warner of “Star Trek V” and six. and Sam Wanamaker of “City of Joy” and “Baby Boom.”

• Everybody take hands.

• [Announcer] “Holocaust” exclusively from World Vision Home Video.

• Okay, thanks. We can hold it there. So this film together with Schindler, but this one in particular, really, I think provokes many of these questions. 1978, it’s made, it’s got all these stars. This is the trailer which is mentioning more of the stars than the content of what it’s about. More of their winnings, the achievements, you know, as a blockbuster entertainment film. Elie Wiesel wrote, “It is untrue. It is offensive to me. It’s cheap. "As a TV production, the film is an insult "to those who perished and those who survived.” That’s Elie Wiesel’s very clear comment and we can understand why. Of course it’s sentimental. It’s all these stars. It’s American accents all the way, well, fair amount of the way through. It’s showing very two-dimensional cardboard cutout characters. We can go on and on with a serious and I think right critique of it. We have to also at the same time balance that critique with couple of facts. The Holocaust, when it was shown in West Germany in 1979, was watched by approximately 24 million West Germans. Now that was more than 35, 38% of the population of West Germany. The first mass production film about the Holocaust. It provoked an enormous number of debates in West Germany at the time. How could this have happened? There were, it was shown, and then afterwards they would have West German historians to answer the questions. And there were thousands of phone calls. How could this have happened? It couldn’t have been like this. It couldn’t have been that bad. Yeah, all these, you know, supposedly naive questions of denial.

So it was the first in West Germany of such mass entertainment, of mass film to provoke such a response amongst over a third of the West German population. That’s extraordinary for one film to do that. Of course, you know, it goes on. We criticise it trivialising the Holocaust. It’s made for profit by NBC. It’s commercialised, you know, commercialisation of this, of the terrible tragedy. Thousands of shocked and outraged Germans wrote letters, made phone calls, historians. It was massive. You know, we can go on and on about what happened. It was also watched in America in 1978 by approximately 120 million viewers. And many spoke about this film together with Schindler as being the one which in a sense gave educational some wake up or some awareness of the horror of the Holocaust. So what do we do? We are faced with on the one hand, mass commercialisation, and as Elie Wiesel says, trivialization, all these severe critiques which are accurate and yet it’s educating, you know, over a third of the American population who are watching it and over a third of the West German population who’ve watched it as well. 2019, the series was broadcast in the United Germany. Fewer than 40% of German school children said they had any knowledge of the word Auschwitz.

I’ll leave that, I don’t think much more needs to be said. The powerful impact from one generation and then later in 2019, showing the same film and what has happened to education, what has happened to learning, to studying, what has happened to insight, whether using film to help teach or any other medium to help teach what is going on, what has happened in these decades later? Should we still make films? Should, yeah, all the questions I mentioned earlier, come back to haunt us. The next one I want you to show is a very brief clip of “Operation Finale,” 2018 film about the capture of Eichmann with Ben Kingsley playing Eichmann. If we can show that, please.

• Something that brought me great happiness to start a new life in Argentina.

• [Radio Announcer] Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced that Adolf Eichmann wanted for his part in the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis will stand trial on Israeli soil.

• Hello Eichmann, my name is Captain Arthur Less. I’m told that you are willing to give us your version of your role in this Third Reich.

• I will, let’s begin.

• Don’t you think he should be tried by due process of law?

• We are paying him too much respect by giving him a trial.

• Why was your department called IV.B4?

• I’m a transportation officer.

• Just not enough.

• Hard evidence.

• I want an admission of guilt.

• He’ll never confess. He was always covering his tracks.

• That had nothing to do with killing Jews. I was obeying orders.

• You carry out the order knowing they will die. Does that not make you responsible?

• I got it.

• Every time he repeats himself three times, he’s lying.

• Never, never, never.

• It wasn’t my job to be loved.

• Okay, we could hold it here. So this film, as we all know, of course the capture of the Eichmann and the role of the Mossad, et cetera. But what is interesting, it’s primarily Eichmann, not just about him being in Israel, but the interaction with the main Mossad agent who captures him. His job is to interrogate and make him admit that his name is Eichmann, et cetera. Both characters are shown as struggling with inner demons, but Eichmann a little bit less. It might be the fact that it’s Ben Kingsley, but it’s acted. He acts Eichmann with such restraint and such ironic self-awareness. It starts to make a question for me of, yes, the young Israeli guy of course is angry and furious, but where’s the audience sympathy going? You know, and it’s a very tricky film for me because it’s also using the techniques of the thriller to capture Eichmann. Now, should one use it and it is of course a thriller story. If it was a thriller in another context. I’m just capturing Slobodan Milosevic or something, you know, but it’s capturing Eichmann and are the filmmakers right to use thriller techniques or not? Should they be using other techniques? You know, the classic discussion between the captured and the capturer. These are profound questions in how to represent the capture of this guy.

So there’s an entertaining thriller quality together with this terrible history. It in a way begins to erase some philosophical depth and it erases for me subtlety and nuance. And it, by focusing too much on these two characters. Okay, the next one I want to show is the interview with Claude Lanzmann. Lanzmann, of course, as we all know, made the remarkable series called “Shoah.” And all he did was interview survivors and people. He never tried to make a fictional representation of any kind. So it’s the Lanzmann Schindler debate. Do I show only something like that, which is as close to documentary as you can without devices of film and fiction? Or can I show fiction as well? And this is an interview with Lanzmann, just very quickly, Lanzmann himself, his family was Jewish, had immigrated to France from Eastern Europe, was part of the French, he was part of the French resistance at the age of 17, along with his father and brother. It’s a nine and a half hour oral testimony, oral witness or history of the Holocaust. It’s made with no historical footage, you know, of the camps or of anything, of bodies, of walking, of anything. Only first person testimony from perpetrators and victims. And in Lanzmann’s phrase, “The evil of Hitler cannot or should not be explained. "To even try is an immoral and an obscene act.” Okay, if we can show it quickly, please.

• So if we can hold it there for a moment. So that’s the Lanzmann interview, the interview with Lanzmann only interviewing perpetrators and mostly of course, survivors. And which represents the one side of the spectrum of this entire debate going onto the film “Holocaust” with Meryl Streep and Schindler, of course, on the other side that I’ve mentioned here. It’s for us to decide which, and where we may sit on this, which side on the debate or to incorporate all. The next one I want to show quickly before the end is from the film, “Conspiracy.” Now this was made in 2001 by the BBC. It was made as a BBC drama with Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth. Branagh playing Heydrich and it’s about the Wannsee meeting, and we all know about that and it’s 90 minutes long. The meeting was approximately 90 minutes long, a conference at the Wannsee of the 15 leading Nazi men, most of course, were highly educated at university, in a wonderful, what we’d call stately, perhaps, house in Berlin in the suburb of Wannsee. It’s based on the minutes of the meeting as much as one could. And there’s almost the terrifying ordinariness of a board meeting, of a corporate meeting. And of course that’s a contemporary approach, but we have to imagine it as Primo Levi would say, would this be close to what had happened or wasn’t it in 90 minutes? The distractions of fine wine, cigars, you know, as Heydrich says about the storage problem, which eventually becomes the word evacuation with the Jews. And the word elegant is the word used so much in this film. And there’s a brilliant German version of it as well of the Wannsee Conference and the word elegant is used so often, clearly a word used in those times. And today, an elegant solution to a problem, an elegant idea.

They have a nice lunch, it’s the power brokers, they are drunk with optimism. They’re smug, they puff on cigars and the extreme horror that we all know, that 15, 16 of them are discussing and what’s going to happen as a result of this short little meeting and that discrepancy between this almost boardroom meeting and what we know is for me, such a powerful use of fiction based on historical fact. You know, it’s almost if they could be discussing pension plan or pay raise for the workers, the way they discuss it. Heydrich in Branagh’s speech finally comes down to the truth. We will not sterilise the Jew and then exterminate them. That’s farcical. Death is the most reliable form of sterilisation, let’s put it that way. And that’s the Heydrich character speaking through Branagh. So I think what’s so powerful is the level of restraint that the Heydrich character in Branagh’s performance captures. And I want to show this is a little clip between him and the so-called legal experts at the time of the Nuremberg Laws and Nazi party, this guy Stuckart, and the legal expert in discussion with Heydrich. This is the level of what’s going on at this meeting where everything was decided. We can show it, please.

• Settled, we are moving along. Now we are presented with a difficult problem. My instinct is to be Alexandrian and solve a difficult tangle with a sharp, clean stroke this afternoon. All our actions must be predicated on law. Everything we have done flows from the Nuremberg laws, which Dr. Stuckart brought forth to the Reichstag in 1935. And now we have to examine those, the blood and honour laws in regard to the problems of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood.

• Not only who is a Jew, but how in each defined circumstance the Jew is expunged from society, the government, the economy through ordinances. The tapestry, if you’ll permit some pride.

• Exemptions written into the law allow too many Jews to remain among us. We address that problem by examining each category and every exemption.

• The Nuremberg laws are very specific.

• When I am done. Thank you, please.

• If I may just say one word more. Now in the obligation, the obligation to to maintain a lawful-

• Another lecture.

• Lawful society. What will we be saying to those where we are departing from the legal letter and deporting a Jew married to a German. A new law will be required by mandating all these-

• Why don’t you write it?

• Consider, consider the Jews are taken away. The German spouses will presumably inherit the property of the Jewish spouses. Go to court, a death certificate will be applied for and what happens to your secret killings then? No matter what you call them, the secret is out, dear friends. Perhaps not inheritance, perhaps, perhaps divorce. Freedom to remarry. So a requisite divorce mechanism dealing with all these marriages to be terminated becomes the right responsibility to its German citizens.

• Doctor.

• I am speaking! Now except for those initiated before the spouse is deported, the courts are going to be so busy with divorces that the civil courts will be on 24 hours shifts and the litigation weight will be accounted in decades.

• Or longer.

• Well, I for one have no sympathy with Germans who climbed into bed with members of the tribe.

• Nor do I. I asked myself, what is this concern? When the ruling principle of our government and our parties to make Germany Jew free. You are arguing to let these yet stay to influence, to operate freely with the exception that you’re knew to them.

• They’re not free. They they are not free. The law restricts them, it isolates them. I am merely speaking-

• Perhaps the judge has some special love for them.

• Yes, yes, special love for them.

• For whom? For Jews? Oh, wonderful. Yeah, you don’t have my credentials. Forgive me, from your uniform, I can infer that you are shallow, ignorant, and naive about the Jews. You are lying, what the party rants on about is how inferior they are, some subspecies. And I keep saying how wrong that is. They are sublimely clever and they are intelligent as well. My indictments to that race are stronger and heavier because they are real. Not your uneducated ideology. They are arrogant and self obsessed and calculating and reject the Christ. And I will not have them pollute German blood.

• Please, Doctor.

• He doesn’t understand and neither do his people. Deal with the reality of the Jew and the world will applaud us. Treat them as imaginary phantoms, evil in human fantasies, and the world will have justified contempt for us. To kill them casually without regard for the law martyrs them, which will be their victory. Sterilisation recognises them as a part of our species, but prevents them from being a part of our race. They’ll disappear soon enough and we will have acted in defence of our race and of our species. And by the law this fellow mentioned the law for the protection of German blood. I wrote that law! And when you have my credentials, then we’ll talk about who loves the Jews and who hates them. Pigs don’t know how to hate. All right, I know too that when it comes to the half mixed that to kill them abandons that half of their blood, which is German.

• I remember you.

• You should, I’m very well known.

• Okay, if we can hold it there. Okay, Emily, thank you. We can hold it there. So I’m going to hold this here just to mention one thing. I think it is so interestingly written, and again, it’s from a contemporary perspective, looking back, based on the minutes of the actual Wannsee meeting. But it’s all, it could be discussing, you know, pension plans. It could be discussing purchasing of this or that. It is filled with the veneer of modern corporate decision making and discussion. It’s filled with a veneer of civilization. The law, the bureaucracy, the this, the that. It’s not filled in any way with the reality. And that discrepancy is to me a Kafkaesque nightmare of hell proportions as to how these things could come about. And these, these highly educated people could do it. Towards the end of the film, Heydrich, the Branagh character goes up to one of the others and he has a drink and a cigar and so on. And he makes this comment, “Soldiering requires the discipline to do the unthinkable. "Politics requires the skill "to get someone else to do the unthinkable for you.” And that’s Heydrich explaining to a colleague what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, while they’re having cigars and cognac. Okay, I was going to show some of “The Pianist.” There are many others, of course. There’s the problems with “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” where the Jewish character is the victim but you has to enable the redemption of the German Nazi commandant of the camp. The Jewish character enables redemption of the German. It’s my criticism of Schindler. The Jewish character Stern has to enable the redemption of Schindler. And yet without Schindler, millions and millions of people around the world and school children would never know about any of the history we’ve been talking about.

Would never know the Holocaust. So one must always balance criticism with a reality. Films on the Bielski, films “Defiance.” There are so many others we could discuss. I just wanted to bring and I’m sorry to go over time here, but a little bit of the nuances of this, I think profoundly important debate and I guess in the end that I would rather take all the films made, all the, and I’m just talking about film at the moment, the books as well, the poems, et cetera. I would rather take all of those than have nothing because if we have nothing, the alternative to me would be, there might be a few little documentaries, which a few people might see. At least this way, not only do we provoke debate, but to give my personal opinion, and it’s very personal. At least this brings it out into a global consciousness, a global warning and using what education should be in the end to make us aware of this kind of thing.

Q&A and Comments:

So Mitzi, thanks. There’s a problem about showing Holocaust imagery. If it becomes too familiar, it becomes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you. And in a way it’s one of the reasons why I show these clips because it’s not showing the images that are fairly well known. I don’t how well known actually, but fairly well and trying to show from a series of different perspectives, which are so complex and complicated, but trying in their own small way, each film in a sense.

Rose, thank you for leaving out some of the documentary. They always have a point of view, exactly. You know, one of the first things any filmmaker is taught, 101 filmmaking, you know, what’s the point of view of the writer, the director, et cetera? And that’s in documentary as much in fiction, there’s always a point of view. So it’s never a purely objective neutral documentary doesn’t happen.

Mitzi, picture of the Mona Lisa. Eventually someone will want exactly. I mean Duchamp as you’re saying, Duchamp painting the moustache on the Mona Lisa in the postmodern kitsch way, you know, the brilliant ironic Duchamp.

Irv, need to show so people do not forget. Yeah, and as I say, I would rather show from Holocaust, the Meryl Streep one, to Schindler, to any of the others, which may have had criticisms, but at least it gets out to millions and millions and millions who would otherwise not learn about at all necessarily. I mean, how many schools, courses or literature have ever studied? I don’t really know of any, hardly any courses, or any of the books even studied. The Holocaust seemed to affect West Germany at that time. Yeah, absolutely. That’s why, you know, over 20 million West Germans watched it. So obviously it had something to do with the timing of it as well.

Carol, an aunt, a survivor of Auschwitz said the depiction of the Holocaust film was like a playground compared to the real thing. Victor Franco nailed it. Yeah, and Elie Wiesel, that’s what Elie Wiesel was saying in the quote I read. It trivialised, it made it for commercial exploitation. It had nothing to do with the reality. He knew exactly, and that is a very, very important and profound and necessary criticism. The only thing we have to weigh up is that versus the fact that 120 million Americans watched it and 20 million West Germans watched it. And it’s the only real perhaps hint of an awareness of the Holocaust. It’s a complicated, such a difficult debate.

Rose, Jews first, German second. Yeah, that’s from from “The Ship of Fools.” We need to learn from that. We are Jews first always, but today we seem to make the same mistake. Yep, it goes way back. You know, it goes way back. You know, are we British first? Are we South African first? American first? Italian, German, and Jewish second? Are we Jewish first, et cetera? I think it’s the endless debate going back centuries of the assimilationist discussion and the spectrum. You know, which is first and which is second? And how uneasy do they sit together or not?

Rose Edmond, the Jews and the bicycle riders is an old Jewish joke. Thank you for that Edmond, okay. I didn’t know, thank you.

Q: Elliot, what do you think of “Seven Beauties?”

A: “Seven Beauties” and “The Night Porter” were two that I really thought hard about whether to show and I decided not to because that takes us into a whole separate debate about the fascination with fascism and the sexualization of the fascination with fascism in a sexual context. And not because I’m a prude, because I’m not, but it opens up another whole area of debate on this. And I wanted to stick within the parameters of the Lanzmann Schindler or Lanzmann Holocaust series debate. So “Seven Beauties” and “The Night Porter,” which certainly and others would come under that discussion, which I want to have, because I wanted to talk about Leni Riefenstahl and others, you know, in a little bit of time because they’re very complicated in the way they use the eroticized imagery of Nazism and terrifyingly complicated. Edmund, just the two Jews, one is reading a paper. One is laughing, the other read the Yiddish paper is crying.

Q: Yep, Barbara, how do you think “The Pawnbroker” would do if it was made today?

A: That’s a great point. I’m not sure actually. I don’t think it would do so well. It doesn’t have enough action. It doesn’t have enough, let’s call it, you know, big drama and action and sequences. You know, it’s set in the pawnbroker’s space, a little bit in the street outside. A little bit of a few other spaces. It’s a very low budget film. I’m not sure it would have success. I watched a very interesting interview with last night actually. There was a BBC documentary on Spielberg and interviews with Spielberg and many of the people who work with him and many others. And the one, made an important point when Spielberg made Schindler, even though he was, made a really good point, said that pitching something like Schindler, a nearly three hour film about the Holocaust set in the camps, et cetera, et cetera. Can you imagine any Hollywood studio today agreeing to finance it? And this guy was saying, you know, it wasn’t guaranteed to be the smash financial hit that it was. It wasn’t guaranteed to be so globally powerful at all. And Spielberg throughout all his, as he called it in his words, all his cinematic tricks and he used a handheld camera and many, many other things went back to the basics of filmmaking. There was no guarantee at the time it would even make its money back. So we have to weigh that as well. Even somebody as famous and well known, it was not assured in the slightest. It could have been hated on the one hand and a total disaster on the other and a commercial disaster. Who knows? He might not have got a job. So these debates are part of the total complexity of all of these films. But I think we would be much the poorer if we could not engage in the debate that’s part of us as lovers of education and discussion and artistic thinking.

Julian, I think it’s possible to have different opinions. Yeah, the advert is kind of saying how good we have produced this by the expense of the Holocaust, but it’s better to have something promotes it so much. Exactly what you’re saying and the Holocaust deniers. Yeah, and have their views rather than have their views unopposed because of the potential dangers still today. I think you put it very well, Julian.

Q: Lena, what were Elie Wiesel’s thoughts on Schindler?

A: Phew, then I’ll go into, I don’t in relation to the Holocaust miniseries, but I’ll have a look at that. It’s a great question.

Thank you, Margaret. The way you present, thank you. Suggesting there was such a low level awareness. Yeah, okay, I appreciate it. The shocking thing is that a survey done in Germany, and this is United Germany of only four, five years ago, showed that less than 38% of Germans had ever heard of the word Auschwitz. You know, I actually read it is, I don’t know, it was a pretty big survey.

Monty, Holocaust and Shoah are word referring to the murder. Holocaust mean hijacked care, the ethnic cleansing. Yep, okay. Thinking Jews are are switching to calling it exclusively Shoah. Yeah, I guess my mother was a history teacher and she brought us up using the word holocaust all the time. And I don’t know, it stuck with me growing up at home, but I take your point entirely and the word Shoah might be much more appropriate.

Julian, perhaps a good way of doing it would be to have a disclaimer with the promo advert here. You know, one can give it a context of interviews, of discussions with historians, with survivors and others, you know, so we can engage, show it and engage with the debate, which is what the West Germans tried to do. Which they did do it when they showed the Holocaust series in the late seventies in West Germany. Okay. And here are you going to discuss, wait a second, I’m just going back here, I just jumped. I find it interesting films in black and white are more powerful. Yeah, I know. I mean, black and white has something of that sense of the past and memory, but does it also have a sense of locking it into the past and does it have the question mark over it? It’s the past. It can’t happen again, that black and white from a viewer’s point of view. I don’t know. It’s an interesting contemporary nuanced debate going on. But great points.

Adrian, a new film will be released soon. “The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes.” Great, okay. Yeah, that will be very interesting. And I also really wanted to show “The Pianist” because I think that’s a remarkable movie and I think Polanski is one who tries to capture so many of the nuances and I really think he does. You know, the German is redeemed at the end, but also the Jewish character, the central protagonist all the way through because the problem for me with “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” is that the main protagonist is the German commandant and the German kid who are the Nazi killers and the Jew has to redeem the German. It’s for me a serious flaw and problem in, you know, who is the victim actually? The victim has shown as the German in “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas.”

Q: Irv, are you going to discuss “Life is Beautiful?”

A: Yeah, I also had many problems with it, Irv, and the reason I didn’t want to discuss it or “Inglorious Bastards” because they provoke a different question, which is around the role of satire and humour and dark humour in relation to films of this. I had to choose one thing to stick to, which as I said, is the Lanzmann Holocaust or Schindler debate. Okay, but good point. Okay, just going back the question that I jumped here.

Okay, Rita, thank you. A kind comment, Julian, earlier comment about awareness. I heard a year or ago that many German schoolchildren are sick of hearing about the Holocaust. Yes, I’ve heard that many times in Germany when I’ve been there. So one always has to educate about it’s burden of duty. Yeah, there’s a burden, there’s a duty to discuss it, to be witness to history, to be, to give testimony to memory, absolutely. And I think the risk of ignorance, as you say, is eternal. Absolutely. And the role of memory and witness and testimony can never be minimised. And the constant ways to try and find new ways with different generations to tell the old story. Definitely.

Arthur, Ben Kingsley was an “Operation Finale.”

Yeah, the iceman, the Thomas, okay. I think that was a different clip then that we did. I think Emily and I, we had a conversation. Yeah, it was a different clip perhaps.

Okay, thank you for that. Brenda, in the face of all the evidence, how can Holocaust denial gain the traction? Well, I think many things can gain the traction of denial. I have to be honest, I’ve seen in my own life and in a personal anecdotal context and a much broader context, how powerful denial can be on so many levels. And I don’t think we can underestimate it. It’s a terrible question to ask, but I don’t think we can underestimate it.

Irv, “The Wannasee Conference,” another film. Yeah. Okay.

And there was the German version as well, “Shoah” by Lanzmann, Susan, was most riveting. Absolutely, when I saw it, I remember watching it over about a week or so, nine a half hours. And it’s unforgettable and eternally memorable for the reasons we spoke.

Q: Judy, your opinion on “The Fatalist?”

A: I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen it or read it. I would love to thank you for that Judy.

Susan, every time the issue of who is a Jew comes up in Israel, should see conspiracies, was settled by the Nazis. Yeah. But you know, we are a stubborn debating, argumentative discussive group and we love debates and argue and different points of view and so on. Part of who, I think we are as Jews in another way, but I get your point entirely, Susan, and I agree with it with the context you’re giving it.

Alison, I watched the first part of show, I found it extremely difficult knowing my relatives and millions died. Yeah, okay, thank you. And I understand completely and feel similarly.

Julian, the clip shows there’s more than one type of scumbag, or more than one type of anti-Semite. Yeah, I think that’s so important because the Wannsee Conference, which is why I chose it, it shows mostly, I mean most of them at PhDs who highly educated now, whether from the legal side or other sides or whatever, the education has nothing to do with anti-Semitism or hate or prejudice of any kind.

Carol, the Wannsee Conference, it all looks so normal, and it’s still a beautiful house in a beautiful landscape. Exactly. And it was a 90 minute meeting with cognac and cigars and pen and paper, Sharon, and charts. Contemporary example, the US prohibiting teaching of slavery. There’s so many examples that proliferate absolutely around the world.

Judith, what’s your opinion on “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas?” This was one and I’m going to discuss it later more with Leni Riefenstahl and does show the horror and how it finally penetrates the mind of the German. My problem, as I mentioned, is that it shows the German characters as the victim who requires the redemption of the Jew. And I find that seriously problematic as a theme in a fictional or non-fictional film. I understand how powerful it is and that it’s being used today to teach in many schools, but I, for that reason I mentioned, you know, I remain critical of it.

Abraham, Abram, the meaning of the meeting in May, 1942, by which time most of the Soviet Jews are killed in elsewhere, Auschwitz, almost all the Soviet Jews. Two million already, yep. Yes, I agree about that. Well, I hear what you’re saying. Soviet Jews, but I still think that meeting is so, so important because it shows the mindset of the leadership, you know, and how a few individuals, how they were thinking and what they were doing to come up with this because in the end, you know, they are the leaders of it all.

Agnes, the source of the bicycle rider joke. But that’s from Abby Mann’s script of the brilliant film “Ship of Fools.” If you want to watch something that is, I think one of the really truly good scripts is Abby Mann’s script. “Ship of Fools” directed by Stanley Kramer. Herbert Hess, Herbert, sorry, I was appalled by lack of knowledge. Yep, it’s from Germany today, as somebody said earlier, sick and tired of watching, and you know, all these phrases we hear.

Merle, we were touring a young Israeli couple on honeymoon, the Holocaust Centre in Cape Town and they said, “Oh, the Second World War?” Hmm. Yeah. You know, as time moves on, as the decades rolled past, I think one has to be so aware of how do we represent memory? How do we represent being witness to the terror of the past? And it is such an important debate and discussion and I think requires endless renewal and endless new approach. And together with these profoundly important questions.

Sheila, thank you. Shoah documentary Schindler. Remember when it came out and opposing going, he’s saying here, Spielberg made “E.T.” made “Jaws,” et cetera. Yeah, they would never have watched Claude Lanzmann and they watched Schindler as you said, 120 million Americans watched Holocaust miniseries. So the point is made about Schindler and the Holocaust film.

Lawrence, sorry, it’s getting a bit late. So I’ll hold on that for may.

Irv, denial. Yes, you’re right, Holocaust denials. Sharon, Hitler said, “Who remembers the Armenian genocide?” Someone said the Holocaust would be like a burp in the long Greek history of Germany. A terrifying, terrifying, nauseous phrase. It’s the job of the people who are invested in it to tell the stories. It’s Hamlet at the end of the play. Draw that breath in this harsh, cruel world and tell my story.

Okay, thank you very much everybody, and I hope you have a great rest of the weekend.