Paper presented at the 27th Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust
and the Churches, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA,
March
2-4, 1997
Stig Hornshoj-Moller, Copenhagen, Denmark
We must look into the abyss
in order to see beyond it.
Robert Jay Lifton, 1986
Our knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust is to-day profoundly
influenced and formed by the ability of film and television to reconstruct
and dramatize the history. One notable example was the American Holocaust
TV series which had a strong impact not only on Germany when it was
shown
in 1978:
"Put names and faces on the victims, bring the abstract horror of
million-fold annihilation down to the flesh-and-blood experience of
the
Weiss family, and you unleash an emotional reaction, even a momentary
catharsis, that libraries full of learned treatises could never produce.
(note 5)".
A more recent example of the same kind is Steven Spielberg's most
remarkable film "Schindler's List" which now has been transferred to
video
and is widely used as a means of teaching the Holocaust to future
generations both in the US and abroad (note 6). Despite the undisputable
qualities of the film - and of the teaching material that has been
published for this purpose - it can be seriously questioned whether
this
kind of teaching the Holocaust really is accomplishing the high goals
listed above. The film creates strong emotions through its realistic
descriptions of the atrocities commited by the German SS and it makes
the
viewer understand, that it was possible for human beings to act so
inhumane
to fellow human beings. "Schindler's List" is for a teacher perhaps
the
most suitable tool to convince his students that the Holocaust did
happen -
and it can used as an effectful warning to young people that it must
not
happen again.
However, the film describes only the Holocaust from the point of view
of
the victims, not from the perspective of the perpetrators. It gives
no
explanation of why and how the perpetrators behaved the way they did
and
there is no indications of an answer to the crucial question of what
made
the Holocaust possible - the message of the film "only" being an appeal
to
the audience to act like Schindler and help people who are persecuted.
From
a ethical point of view this is undoubtedly an important aspect, because
it
counteracts the deniers of the Holocaust, but it is definitely not
enough.
Teaching of the Holocaust must create an awareness of all those features
and attitudes in to-day's society which might be the beginning of a
development that could end up as persecution or even genocidal killing.
Or
to put it in another way: "Schindler's List" must be supplemented by
material which demonstrates the way the genocidal mentality was induced
into the perpetrators.
One of the ways this could be done would be to show authentic Nazi film
propaganda. Both Hitler and Goebbels considered the film medium to
be the
most important tool to influence the minds of the German people (note
7).
Leni Riefenstahl's famous documentary "Triumph des Willens" on the
Nueremberg Rallies in 1934 was certainly instrumental in creating the
"Fuehrer-Myth" (note 8), and another "documentary", "Der ewige Jude
(1940),
was produced in order to "reveal" the "truth" of the Jews (note 9).
It
contained the whole "legitimation" for their annihilation.
A source-critical shot-to-shot analysis of the film demonstrates that
"Der
ewige Jude" is probably the most manipulated film ever made (note 10).
Apart from being a schocking example of Nazi paranoia towards the Jews
it
is also one of the best illustrations of how distorted "reality" can
be
used as a means of creating hate and genocidal mentality, because we
are
able to document the way it was done down to the tiniest detail. As
outlined below, there are even strong reasons to believe that it was
this
ability of the audio-visual media to "(re)produce reality" that brought
the
decision-makers (Goebbels and Hitler) themselves across what Lifton
once
called "the Threshold of Genocide" (note 11) - and that the release
of the
film can be seen as the promulgation of Hitler's decision to launch
the
Holocaust (note 12).
"Der ewige Jude" contains 70 minutes of vicious anti-Semitic propaganda
of
the worst kind and it is still an emotional and intellectual challenge
to
those who see it: How would you have reacted, if you had seen the film
in
1940?
Although "Der ewige Jude" was produced almost sixty years ago, the German
government still considers it to be so dangerous that it is forbidden
to
show it in public - with one exemption: University teachers are allowed
to
use it as part of their teaching - and by special permission it can
also be
shown in seminars dealing with "politische Bildung" (education in
politics), if the responsible teacher can prove that he has got specific
expertise in media-critics and the history of the Holocaust (note 13).
Nevertheless, a lot of video-copies of "Der ewige Jude" is in circulation
among neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups all over the world to whom it
is a
"cult film" (note 14). A copy with an American voice-over can be obtained
by everybody from the firm, International Historic Films in Chicago,
and
all efforts by the German government to stop this distribution have
failed,
because legally it is considered to be in accordance with the First
Ammendment (note 15).
From these facts arise at least two important questions:
Should we still be so afraid of this more than fifty-five years old
hate
picture that we pretend that it does not exist, thus leaving its use
to
those whose racism it confirms?
Or should we dare to use the film ourselves as a means for teaching
the
Holocaust, thus presenting the authentic venom in order to vaccinate
future
generations against Nazism?
Before a discussion of these two questions in detail it is, however,
neccessary to present the history of the film, as it is rather unknown
even
to most scholars of the Holocaust.
"Coercion was the reason why for years I only talked about peace. But
gradually it became neccessary to condition the German people
psychologically and slowly make it grasp that there do exist things
that
one has to solve with violent means when they cannot be solved by peaceful
means. To do so, however, it was neccessary not to make propaganda
for
violence as such, but to elucidate certain events of foreign policy
(note
17) to the German people in such a way that the inner voice of
the people
by itself slowly began to call for violence. Accordingly, it meant
to
elucidate certain events in such a way that totally automatically the
conviction would gradually evolve in the brains of the broad masses:
What
one cannot solve with fair means, one has to solve with violence, because
it cannot go on like this."
The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph Goebbels, who for the
first
time decided to use the film medium as a tool for inducing anti-Semitism
into the German people (note 18). Being responsible for Nazi film
production he had, however, earlier preferred other topics (including
easy
entertainment and more "positive" presentations of Nazi world view)
(note
19), but immediately after Hitler's speech he called upon the production
companies to present scripts for anti-Semitic feature films (note 20).
His
wish for a "documentary" could only be fulfilled after the Campaign
in
Poland in September 1939, because he lacked footage of Jews actually
looking like the Nazi stereotype of the Jew, of services in the synagogue
and of ritual slaughtering (note 21).
From his diary as well as other sources we can follow the production
of
this particular propaganda film - "Der ewige Jude" - which right from
the
beginning was intended to become the ultimate public legitimation of
anti-Semitism, in accordance with Hitler's afore-mentioned demand (note
22).
There are strong reasons to believe that the film and its production
history should be characterized as a mirror of the decision-making
process
to launch the Holocaust itself, because the final version of the film
can
only be interpreted as a deliberate call for annihilation, through
its
juxta-positioning of ritual slaughtering - staged as cruelty to animals
-
and Hitler's notorius prophecy of January 30, 1939 (note 23).
In order to create the strongest effect on the public as possible Joseph
Goebbels had ordered ritual Jewish slaughtering to be filmed in the
Lodz
ghetto, and when he saw the rushes of these scenes on October 16, 1939,
he
wrote in his diary:
"Scenes so horrific and brutal in their explicitness that one's blood
runs
cold. One shudders at such barbarism. This Jewry must be annihilated."
(note 24)
He showed the scenes at Hitler's dinner table on October 28, 1939,
and
those present "were all deeply shocked" (note 25). Two days later,
Goebbels
himself went to the ghetto of Lodz - and commented on his impressions
in
his diary:
"It is indescribable. They are no longer human beings, they are animals.
It is therefore no humanitarian task, but a task for the surgeon. One
must
make cuts here, and that in a most radical way. Or Europe will one
day
collapse from the Jewish disease." (note 26)
Goebbels pursued this idea of a genocidal solution during the whole
production of a film which can only be seen as his personal advocacy
for
prevailing on Hitler himself to draw the "natural" consequence of his
own -
exterminist, yet still theoretical - ideology (note 27). The film was
recut, rephrased and tested several times in accordance with Hitler's
wishes before the Fuehrer finally approved the film for public screening,
probably on May 20, 1940 (note 28).
However, "Der ewige Jude" was not released immediately because it awaited
the final cut of the feature film "Jud Suess" which was another part
of
Goebbels' propaganda package. It should arouse those anti-Semitic feelings
that were to be "proven" by the "authentic film-document", "Der ewige
Jude"
(note 29). While "Jud Suess" had its opening night with great publicity
during the Venice film festival on September 6, 1940, "Der ewige Jude"
was
shown to the top people in the Third Reich on September 8 as the
demonstration of the new kind of war propaganda that should prepare
the
German audience for the continuation of the war (note 30). Now, nobody
could be ignorant about the fact that the war was not just a "normal"
war.
It was a war on "Weltanschauungen", based on racism. Members of the
attendant audience, however, protested heavily against showing the
slaughtering scenes outside party meetings, and Goebbels had to produce
a
milder version - without these scenes - for women and children (note
31).
"Der ewige Jude" finally had its opening night on November 28, 1940,
where
its director - Fritz Hippler - stressed that the film was the proof
of the
correctness of Hitler's prophecy from 1939. In an interview, broadcasted
all over Germany, Hippler concluded by quoting this prophecy after
having
pointed out that the premise - the war - had become reality (note 32).
And
just after the film had been shown all over Germany, Hitler himself
on
January 30, 1941, began to recall the prophecy in his broadcasted speeches
- thus virtually giving oral confirmation of the call for genocide
expressed and legitimized in the film (note 33).
It can thus be argued that "Der ewige Jude" could be Hitler's public
statement of what was to be the next step in his war against the Jews
-
using the emotional power of modern reality-like mass media to transfer
his
decision into the minds of the perpetrators and bystanders. Just as
the
Fuehrer in his rebuke to the propaganda makers on November 10, 1938
had
outlined, the German people were themselves to take the decision to
kill
European Jewry systematically - out of the conviction: "What one cannot
solve with fair means, one has to solve with violence, because it cannot
go
on like this." (note 34)
Testimonies like the one by Kurt Moebius quoted above are indeed horrifying
proofs of how successfull this strategy was.
A project was launched in 1970 at the Institute of History at the
University of Copenhagen, originally as a purely methodological attempt
to
establish principles for source-critical editions of important film
documents (note 35). One of the films selected was "Der ewige Jude".
As it,
however, soon became clear that the film contained excellent educational
examples of all kinds of propaganda techniques within the audio-visual
media, the project got a supplementary perspective apart from the
methodological one: We wanted to find out whether the film - or part
of it
- could be used to teach mass-media criticism outside the university,
particularly in high-schools. First of all we had to find out what
effects
it had on young people of the present day. In our own opinion the film
was
both plump and grotesque and had just the opposite effect of the one
originally intended, because of our knowledge of the Holocaust, but
we had
to support our notion through empirical research as we, of course,
in no
way wanted to arouse any kind of anti-Semitism.
Between 1973 and 1975 we tested "Der ewige Jude" on a sample of 1200
Danish
high-school students in the age between 16 and 19, by means of a
questionaire consisting of 25 questions, and prepared according to
the best
sociological standards at the time. We had hidden some "traps" in order
to
control the honesty of the answers which were filled out anonymously.
The
result of the survey was both clear and encouraging to us. Only one
single
person expressed that he had changed his opinion of Jews in a negative
direction - and from an analysis of his other answers we could conclude
that he already was a latent anti-Semite before viewing the film.
>From this survey we could conclude beyound any doubt that the fear
that we
and other experts had had of unintentionally creating anti-Semitism
among
Danish high-school students was unfounded. That was most of all a question
of the different experiences of different generations. A close analysis
of
each individual questionaire demonstrated that if/when the film made
somebody change his or her attitude towards Jews, it was clearly in
the
directly opposite direction of the one originally intended by Goebbels.
The
film, however, had another effect: The experience of seventy minutes
of
hate propaganda, as issued by the Nazi authorities, suddenly made the
students reflect upon the mental process of ordinary Germans in the
Third
Reich. The students expressed the view that they now understood what
it
must have been like to live in a totalitarian society and how difficult
it
must have been to oppose the media bombardment of the authorities actively.
Some of them even said, that they felt sorry for the Germans - and
started
to comment on the problems of coping with guilt after the Holocaust.
They
had suddenly become aware of the range and efficiency of Nazi propaganda
which had brain-washed the German public.
Most of all, however, we were surprised by the ability of the youth
to be
critical in relation to what they saw. Because they had grown up with
television contrary to most members of the project group they handled
the
informations from the film in much more balanced way than we had ever
expected. They were also able to express their impressions and points
of
view on a very differentiated level. From a democratic point of view
it was
most comforting to us that we had underestimated their ability to associate
to more general thinking and to draw their individual conclusions.
One of the questions asked was whether the topic of the film was still
of
current interest and in case the answer was "yes", the student should
argue
why. We thought that the students would refer either to persecutions
of
Jews in the Soviet Union and Poland or to the (then) recent Yom Kippur-War.
About 60 percent answered the question in the affirmative, but only
half
of these pointed to matters related to Jews. The rest referred to racism
in
general - including the Danish attitude to Turkish and Yugoslav workers
in
Denmark - or to the neccessity of being critical to mass media.
Although our experiences thus were encouragingly positive, the project
of
making the film - or part of it - available to Danish high-school teachers
stopped for a number of reasons. One of them was that the group members
got
their degrees and left university, another that German authorities
in the
late 1970's had tightened the rules for lending copies of the film
from the
Federal Archives in Koblenz.
The difficulties with the accessability was (and still is) - together
with
the lack of tradition among historians of using films as historical
sources
- the reason why the film was (and still is) almost unknown to both
scholars and students of the Holocaust. In 1972 the project group therefore
contacted the Institute for the Scientific Film in Goettingen - an
institution owned by the German federal states which reprints film
sources
for research and educational purposes at the German universities.
A survey carried out in the following year showed that 60 out of 63
professors of modern history supported such a reprint and the institute
obtained the rights for university use from Transit-Film in Munich
which
controls the rights of Nazi film production on behalf of the German
Government. In return the institute had to publish a written commentary
to
the film in order to refute the manipulations in the film. For many
years
there only did exist a preliminary text, until the final source-critical
edition was published by me for the institute in 1995 (note 36).
In 1979 the German Association of History Teachers held a large conference
in Berlin in order to discuss how they could deal with the effects
of the
American TV-series "Holocaust" which had aroused an enourmous debate
in the
West German public. We presented our experiences from Denmark and argued
that the use of such authentic material could be one of the ways to
work up
the traumas of the past (note 37). Most of the participants agreed,
but for
many reasons nothing came out of the ideas of a cooperation that could
prepare the neccessary didactic material.
The next initiative concerning the educational use came from the University
of Cologne where two German psychologists, Dr. Yizhak Ahren and Dr.
Christoph B. Melchers, in the mid-1980's studied the effects of
anti-Semitic propaganda films on ordinary Germans to-day with the help
of
in-depth psychological interviews. First they analysed the impact of
the
feature film "Jew Suess" (note 38) and then of "Der ewige Jude" (note
39).
In their concluding reflections they underlined the fact that any film
experience can be seen as a dialogue between the film and the viewer,
where
the viewer is bombarded with statements which he principally can accept
as
trustworthy or reject as untrustworthy. They summarized their empirical
findings as follows:
"Since 1945 the situation in Germany has changed so fundamentally that
the
film no longer can have the same effects as was originally intended.
With
to-day's knowledge of the crimes of the Nazis the audience has quite
different possibilities of playing the balls back. But the film is
still
able to produce insecurity about Jews and to make existing prejudice
current and to confirm it. Those who have seen the film 'Der ewige
Jude'
would want to have 'trustworthy information' about the different topic
which the 'documentary' has presented (need to speak, questions). However,
by careful analysis of different scenes and by illuminating the historical
context historians who have dealt with the film in a historical-critical
way are able to confort this need from the audience." (note 40)
To Ahren and Melchers there is a striking similarity between modern
information through mass media and commercials on one hand and open
propaganda on the other, and they explicitly argued that the only way
to
fight such propaganda is to make it a specific topic in education.
Therefore they strongly advocated the use of "Der ewige Jude" in history
teaching as well as in special courses on politics:
"Education in propaganda is able to neutralize impact; this education
could
on the other hand itself also change into propaganda. Enlightment on
propaganda goes direct to the roots, when it reconstructs the way of
the
impact and makes it discussable. Together with such an analysis the
viewing
of such a propaganda film can be a lesson on the complexity and development
of mind and also lead to a deeper understanding of historical realities."
(note 41)
I strongly believe the answer is no. Viewing the film produces a ominous
warning about what can happen when "produced" reality in a reality-like
medium is conceived as the reality itself. In this respect, "Der ewige
Jude" has become the ancestor of audio-visual propaganda on TV which
- like
it happened in former Yugoslavia - has instigated and legitimized genocidal
killing in our time (note 44). Through a comparison with such examples
an
analysis of the film - with the hindsight of what were the dreadful
consequences of this piece of "produced reality" - we can help to disclose
those psychological patterns of genocidal mentality which should be
the
ultimate aim of teaching about the Holocaust.
1. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Gerald Fleming,
London, for his encouraging and challenging criticism during the
preparation of this paper.
2. Quoted from Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: Hitler's Willing Executioners.
Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York 1996, p. 179. My underlining.
3. Robert Jay Lifton/Eric Markusen: The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust
and Nuclear Threat. New York 1986.
4. This process is described in detail in my Danish book: Foerermyten.
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels og historien bag et folkemord. Copenhagen
1996, 424 pages (The Fuehrer-Myth. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and
the
History behind a Genocide). Basic thinking and preliminary results
are also
presented in two articles in German: Stig Hornshoj-Moller: "Die
Entscheidung. Der antisemitische Propagandafilm 'Der ewige Jude' und
seine
Bedeutung fuer den Holocaust." In: Gerhard Maletzke/Ruediger Steinmetz
(ed.): Zeiten und Medien - Medienzeiten. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag
von
Karl Friedrich Reimers. Leipzig 1995, p. 142-63. - Stig Hornshoj-Moller:
"'Der ewige Jude' (1940) - Legitimation und Ausloeser eines
Voelkermordes."
In: Karl Friedrich Reimers (ed.): Unser Jahrhundert im Film und Fernsehen.
Muenchen 1995, p. 59-97.
5. Josef Joffe: "Goldhagen in Germany". The New York Review, November
28,
1996, p. 18-21. - Cf. also Friedrich Knilli/Siegfried Zielinski (ed.):
Holocaust zur Unterhaltung. Anatomie eines internationalen Bestsellers.
Berlin 1982. - Friedrich Knilli/Siegfried Zielinski (ed.): Betrifft
'Holocaust'. Zuschauer schreiben an den WDR. Berlin 1983.
6. Facing History and Ourselves. A Guide to the Film Schindler's List.
Brookline, Massachusetts 1994.
7. David Welch: Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933-1945. Oxford 1983.
-
Hilmar Hoffmann: "'... und zahle nicht die Toten!'. Die Funktion von
Film
und Kino im Dritten Reich". In: Hillmar Hoffmann/Heinrich Klotz (ed.):
Die
Kultur unseres Jahrhunderts. Bd. 3. 1933-1945. Duesseldorf 1991, p.
151-83.
8. Martin Loiperdinger: Rituale der Mobilmachung. Der Parteitagsfilm
'Triumph des Willens' von Leni Riefenstahl. Opladen 1987. - Martin
Loiperdinger/Rudolf Herz/Ulrich Pohlmann (ed.): Fuehrerbilder. Muenchen
1995.
9. Stig Hornshoj-Moller: "Der ewige Jude". Quellenkritische Analyse
eines
antisemitischen Film. Goettingen 1995 (= Beitrage zu zeitgeschichtlichen
Filmquellen Bd. 2). - Cf. also note 4.
10. Cf. note 9.
11. Robert Jay Lifton: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the
Psychology
of Genocide. New York 1986.
12. Cf. note 4 and 9.
13. Oral information from the executive of Transit-Film, Munich, Karl
Woerner (now retired).
14. Rebecca Lieb: "Nazi hate movies continue to ignite fierce passions".
New York Times, August 4, 1991. - Michael Schmidt: Heute gehoert uns
die
Strasse. Der Insider-Report aus der Neonazi-Szene. Duesseldorf 1994,
p.
47-52. - Stig Hornshoj-Moller: "Kultfilm der Neonazis. 'Der ewige Jude'
verbreitet immer noch 24 Luegen pro Sekunde". medium 3/1994, p. 31-33.
15. Cf. note 13.
16. Wilhelm Treue: "Rede Hitlers vor der deutschen Presse (10. November
1938). Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte 6 (1958), p. 175-88.
17. As the Jews from Hitler's point of view did not belong to the German
people, the Jewish Question consequently was a matter of foreign policy.
18. Ralf Georg Reuth: Goebbels. Muenchen 1990, p. 399-400.
19. Cf. note 7.
20. Dorothea Hollstein: Jud Suess und die Deutschen. Frankfurt/Main
1983.
-
Regine Mihail Friedmann: L'image et son juif. Paris 1983.
21. A detailed description of the production story of "Der ewige Jude"
is
given in my source-critical edition (note 9).
22. Ralf Georg Reuth: "Glaube und Judenhass als Konstanten im Leben
des
Joseph Goebbels". In: Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.): Joseph Goebbels Tagebuecher
1924-1945. Muenchen 1992, vol. 1, 20-46. - Cf. also Elke Froehlich
(ed.):
Die Tagebuecher von Joseph Goebbels. Samtliche Fragmente. Bd. 1-4.
Muenchen
1987.
23. Cf. note 4 and 9.
24. Froehlich (note 22) vol. 3, p. 612.
25. Froehlich (note 22), vol. 3, p. 625-26.
26. Froehlich (note 22) vol. 3, p. 628-29.
27. According to Felix Kersten, Heinrich Himmler explicitly blaimed
Goebbels as the man who made Hitler take the final decision to launch
the
Holocaust. Heinz Hoehne: Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf. Die Geschichte
der
SS. Muenchen 1967, p. 298.
28. Fritz Hippler - executive director of the film - in 1992 told the
BBC
in a TV-interview, that "Hitler wanted with this film so-to-say to
prove
that Jewry was a parasitic race in humanity that should be excreted
from
the rest of humanity. This film should be the evidence for this purpose.
For more than 13 months this film was changed, recut, enlarged and
so on
at least more than a dozen times, not to speak of the different versions
of
the commentary which became still more bloodthirsty, more aggressive".
And
the correctness of this testimony is corroborated in details by the
source-critical analysis of the production history of the film. - For
the
reasons to date Hitler's final approval of the film, cf. the literature
listed in note 4.
29. Cf. note 4 and 9. - According to the rolling titles at the beginning
of
the film "Der ewige Jude" was a "documentary film" which - "shows us
Jews
the way they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the
mask of
the civilized European." It used the slaughter scenes as the emotional
climax, claiming that the reason for showing this "original footage",
which
belonged to the "most dreadful" ever recorded by a camera, was justified
by
one argument: By means of seeing for themselves the German people would
at
last "comprehend the truth of Jewry". And according to the commentary
-
read by the authoritative speaker of the Newsreels - "these pictures
prove
the cruelty of this form of slaughter. It reveals the character of
a race
which conceals its brutality beneath the cloak of pious religious
practices."
"Der ewige Jude" contained nothing new, but was virtually a filmed "black
book" filled with examples from many years of anti-Semitic traditions.
As
part of the propaganda set-up - and as with all feature films of the
day -
one could purchase an illustrated program, the Illustrierte Film-Kurier,
with a summary of the contents of the film which is reprinted here
in order
to give an impression of this the hate-film of all times:
"The film begins with an impressive expedition through the Jewish ghettoes
in Poland. We are shown Jewish living quarters, which in our view cannot
be
called houses. In these dirty rooms lives and prays a race, which earns
its
living not by work but by haggling and swindling. From the little urcin
to
the old man, they stand in the streets, trading and bargaining.
Using
trick photography, we are shown how the Jewish racial mixture in Asia
Minor
developed and flooded the entire world. We see a parallel to this in
the
itinerant routes of rats, which are the parasites and bacillus-carriers
among animals, just as the Jews occupy the same position among mankind.
The
Jew has always known how to assimilate his external appearance to that
of
his host. Contrasted are the same Jewish types, first the Eastern Jew
with
his kaftan, beard, and sideburns, and then the clean-shaven, Western
European Jew. This strikingly demonstrates how he has deceived the
Aryan
people. Under this mask he increased his influence more and more in
Aryan
nations and climbed to higher-ranking positions. But he could not change
his inner being.
After the bannishment of the Jews from Europe was lifted, following
the age
of Enlightment, the Jew succeeded within the course of several decades
in
dominating the world economy, before the various host nations realized
-
and this despite the fact that they made up only 1 per cent of the
world
population. An excerpt from an American film about the Rothschilds,
made by
Jews, reveals to us the cunning foundations of their banking empire.
Then
we see how Jews, working for their international finance, drive the
German
people into the November Revolution. They then shed their anonymity
and
step out openly on to the stage of political and cultural life. Thus
the
men who were responsible for the disgraceful debasement of the German
people are paraded before us. Incontestable examples are shown of how
they
robbed the country and the people of immense sums. As well as gaining
financial supremacy they were able to dominate cultural life. The repulsive
pictures of so-called Jewish 'art' reveal the complete decline of cultural
life at that time. Using original sequences from contemporary films,
the
degrading and destructive tendency of Jewish power is exposed. For
hundreds
of years German artists have glorified figures from the Old Testament,
knowing full well the real face of Jewry. How the Jew actually looks
like
is shown in scenes shot by Jews themselves in a 'culture film' of a
Purim
festival, which is still celebrated today to commemorate the slaughter
of
75.000 anti-Semitic Persians, and the doctrine with which future Rabbis
in
Jewish schools are educated to be political pedagogues. We look into
a
Jewish 'Talmud' class and experience the oriental tone of the ceremony
in a
Jewish synagogue, where Jews conduct business deals among themselves
during
the holy services.
However, the cruel face of Judaism is most brutally displayed in the
final
scenes, in which original shots of a kosher butchering are revealed,
These
film documents of the inhuman slaughter of cattle and sheep without
anaesthesia provide conclusive evidence of a brutalty which is simply
inconceivable to all Aryan people. In shining contrast, the film closes
with pictures of German people and German order which fill the viewer
with
a feeling of deep gratification for belonging to a race whose Fuehrer
is
fundamentally solving the Jewish problem."
30. Froehlich (note 22) vol. 4, p. 315.
31. Willi A. Boelcke (ed.): Kriegspropaganda 1939-1941. Geheime
Ministerkonferenzen im Reichspropagandaministerium. Stuttgart 1966,
p. 503
and 518.
32. Interview printed in three German film magazines: Der Film No.
48/1940; Film-Kurier No. 279/1940; Filmwelt No. 49/1940. Reprinted
in my
source-critical edition (note 9) p. 309-12.
33. C.C. Aronsfeld: "'Perish Judah'. Nazi Extermination Propaganda
1920-1945. Pattern of Prejudice 12, 5 (1978), p. 22-23.
34. Cf. note 16.
35. The project was initiated by Professor Niels Skyum-Nielsen who worked
out a source-critical methodology for using films in historical research.
His Assistent Professor Karsten Fledelius was responsible for the survey,
testing the effects of using the film for teaching the Holocaust and
media
critics.
36. Survey in the archives of the Institute for the Scientific Film,
Nonnenstieg 72, D-37075 Goettingen, Germany. TEL.: +49-551-50240 -
FAX:
+49-551-5024400.
37. Karsten Fledelius/Stig Hornshoj-Moller: "Nationalsozialistische
Antisemitismus-Propaganda: Filmbeispiel 'Der ewige Jude'". Tagung der
Koferenz fuer Geschichtsdidaktik, Berlin, September 24-27, 1979
(unpublished).
38. Christoph B. Melchers: Untersuchungen zur Wirkungspsychologie
nationalsozialistischer Propagandafilme. Koeln 1977.
39. Yizhak Ahren/Stig Hornshoj-Moller/Christoph B. Melchers: "Der ewige
Jude" oder wie Goebbels hetzte: eine Untersuchung zum
nationalsozialistischen Propagandafilm. Aachen 1990.
40. Ahren et al. (note 39) p. 75-76.
41. Ahren et al. (note 39) p. 108-09.
42. Cf. note 5.
43. Cf. note 5.
44. During the summer of 1992 I closely followed Serbian and Croate
Television live on Cable-TV. My experiences from viewing these programs
as
well as the whole mix of programs finally made me realize the importance
of
"Der ewige Jude" as a crucial factor for instigating the Holocaust.
Return to the H-Holocaust page.
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