The weird revelations in Germany this month about a small group of neo-Nazi terrorists who killed at least nine foreigners and survived “underground” for 13 years by knocking over the occasional bank have, understandably, embarrassed a number of law enforcement officials. It’s even more confusing to Germans that the group managed to kill a policewoman in 2007 and plot against a very specific list of 88 politicians and public figures without coming to the attention of “Verfassungsschutz” authorities — Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV. The BfV ... Read More
Demjanjuk Found Guilty of Nazi War Crimes
May 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A German court has convicted John “Ivan” Demjanjuk, a man with several lives — Ukrainian collective farmer, Soviet soldier, Nazi concentration camp guard, U.S. autoworker and then international symbol of justice delayed — of being party to taking 30,000 or so other lives during World War II. Demjanjuk, now 91, has been entangled in the West’s legal systems since 1986, when the U.S. deported him for having lied about his wartime activities after he immigrated to America. He was shipped to Israel, tried, sentenced to death, released, returned to the U.S., and booted out again, this ... Read More
‘A Film Unfinished’ Focuses on Nazi Documentary
August 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
No matter what crime, perversity or act of madness the Nazis committed, there's always a new one to be uncovered. Case in point is A Film Unfinished, a documentary currently opening around the country in which filmmaker Yael Hersonski deconstructs 60 minutes of unedited propaganda footage shot by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. On the surface, the scenes in the unfinished film, snippets of which were used for years as generic footage in Holocaust-related documentaries, look like the real deal: mass street sequences, people unconcernedly passing by the bodies of those who have ... Read More
‘Harlan’ Documentary Examines Nazi-Era Film Director
March 6, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
If Jud Suss — Rise and Fall, recently shown at the Berlin Film Festival, takes the story of the most notorious anti-Semitic film ever made and paints it in melodramatic terms, then Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss, a documentary currently opening around the country, is its historical antidote. Directed by Felix Moeller, the film is the mesmerizing story of Veit Harlan, the most famous director of the Nazi era, whose rabidly anti-Jewish 1940 film Jew Suss was not only a huge European hit, but was required viewing for all S.S. soldiers and has left a legacy that his children and ... Read More
How to Film Nazis
February 24, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The big surprise last week during the Berlin Film Festival was a disastrous premiere for a long-awaited feature film, Jud Süß — Rise and Fall, by a talented German director named Oskar Roehler. The film took liberties with an otherwise true story from the Nazi era and ended its world premiere to a chorus of boos. It was a strange baptism. As pure moviemaking, the film isn't bad. Another film that takes even more outrageous liberties with Nazi history, moreover — Inglourious Basterds, by Quentin Tarantino — has been praised far and wide by German critics. The main difference appears ... Read More
Sirens and Bells and City-Busting Past
February 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The Allied firebombing of Dresden in 1945 destroyed the baroque center of what Pfc. Kurt Vonnegut called, in a letter home from Germany, "possibly the world's most beautiful city." Every year since 1946, at 9:45 p.m. on Feb. 13, the city churches ring out an echo of the air-raid sirens that first announced the planes. It's an eerie thing to witness. This year, Dresden was covered in snow; lamps floodlit both new and surviving churches, and bells sounded from both sides of the Elbe River. People stopped what they were doing. A few stray Dresdeners set off fireworks, which was even eerier. In ... Read More
