By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — One of the notable things about this year’s Oscar nominations is the absence of films about the Holocaust. I wonder if this is a result of what Simone Schweber has termed, “Holocaust fatigue.” According to her, overexposure to the Holocaust in education and popular culture may have inadvertently desensitized the public to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis or exhausted its interest in the subject. Though Schweber speculated about this phenomenon in 2006, the Oscars have lagged behind it. Between then and now, no fewer than seven films have received nominations in their respective categories, the most recent being In Darkness in 2012 for Best Foreign Language Film.
Of course, it could be that this year there are stronger entries on other topics or weaker ones on the Holocaust. I must admit that I can’t think of any feature films about the Holocaust released in 2012 that merit inclusion in the Best Film or Best Foreign Language Film categories. When I turn to documentaries, however, it is a different story. So here is a list of five I feel should have been “contenders,” but got overlooked.
I’ve already heaped praise on Numbered in my December 25th column, but want to reiterate what a fascinating group of survivors and cinematography it features. Doug Shultz’s Defiant Requiem testifies to the power of music to serve as a form of cultural resistance. It recounts survivors of Terezin speaking about how performing Verdi’s “Messa de Requiem” there helped them muster their resolve to persevere in the face of constant physical and psychological assaults. It will be screened on February 17th at 1:30 p.m. at the Reading Cinemas 14 in Clairemont as part of the San Diego Jewish Film Festival.
Chanoch Ze’evi’s Hitler’s Children also will be shown in the festival at the same Clairemont cineplex on February 8th at 1:30 PM and February 14th at 8:00. It consists of interviews of descendents of the most infamous Nazi war criminals like Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. Some are sincerely ashamed and devote their lives to repudiating the notorious legacy of their relatives. Others acknowledge the injustices perpetrated by their forebears, but just want to live their lives in isolation and preserve some semblance of their German pride.
Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat already has played at the Landmark theatre in La Jolla and the On Demand cable channel. When the director rummages through the belongings of his recently deceased grandmother, he discovers letters and newspaper articles about his grandparents’ lifelong relationship with an important Nazi official Baron von Mildenstein. He then investigates this family secret. For those well-versed in Holocaust history, it is no surprise that in the first years of Hitler’s reign, Germany signed the Haavara Agreement with the World Zionist Organization, enabling German Jews fleeing to Palestine to retain enough of their savings to meet the British financial minimum for Jewish immigrants while Germany impounded the rest of their assets to be used for the purchase of German exports to Palestine.
In the second phase of Nazi rule, the original approach to Jewish emigration was abandoned. Jewish property was simply Aryanized, and, the once remote prospect of a Jewish state became an ominous possibility with the consideration of the Peel Partition Plan of 1937. Yet Goldfinger probes further to find out why his grandparents remained friends with the Mildensteins despite the war and the “Final Solution.” He doesn’t find any definitive answers, but the quest assumes more importance than its closure.
Finally, Rachel Goslins’ Besa: The Promise inventively combines animated recreations interviews, and photographic portraits to recover the forgotten history of how the predominantly Muslim population of Albania rescued 2,000 Jews during the Holocaust. The Albanian commitment to honor the pledge made by King Zog to protect the Jews from the German occupation forces might have sunk into oblivion due to the isolation of communist Albania, its strained relations with Israel, and the continuing tensions between Jews and Muslims over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Besa reminds us that the ethical foundations of the Abrahamic religions can foster benevolence instead of fueling bigotry.
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Lawrence Baron recently retired from being the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005) and editor of The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011). He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com