A Night at The Garden

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Movie
Original title A Night at The Garden
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2018
length 7 minutes
Rod
Director Marshall curry
script Marshall curry
production Marshall Curry,
Laura Poitras ,
Charlotte Cook
music James Baxter
cut Marshall curry
occupation

A Night at The Garden (German An evening at the Garden ) is an English documentary short film by Marshall Curry . With the help of archive material, the film shows a “pro-American” Nazi election rally in Madison Square Garden in New York from 1939, in particular anti-Semitic parts of a speech by Fritz Julius Kuhn , chairman of the American-German Confederation .

Curry also wrote the script, edited and co-produced the film with Laura Poitras and Charlotte Cook. A Night at The Garden is nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Documentary Short Film in 2019 .

content

The seven-minute film essentially consists of archive material (picture and sound), supplemented by text panels for classification and credits, and partly underlaid with atmospheric music. He uses excerpts from a speech given in English by Fritz Julius Kuhn , the chairman of the American-German Confederation , which he gave to 20,000 Americans in Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939, i.e. before the war began . In this speech, Kuhn shows his anti-Semitic stance, which glorifies the white non-Jew who wants to get his America back from the control of the Jews. During the speech, a disturber who has rushed towards Kuhn is overwhelmed on stage by uniformed Nazis and then dragged away by New York police officers. His pants are briefly pulled down; in the background young spectators celebrate the removal. Kuhn followed the facts with little enthusiasm. Traditions of American culture such as the oath of flags and the American hymn sung at the end frame Kuhn's speech, along with impressions of uniformed adolescents marching in and the audience's Hitler salute .

background

The Amerikadeutsche Bund was a National Socialist organization in the US that propagated anti-Semitic and anti-communist goals and supported Nazi Germany. The federal mass rally in Madison Square Garden was highly controversial, but was approved by then New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia , citing freedom of speech. After the meeting, however, LaGuardia had Fritz Julius Kuhn's financial conduct examined. It turned out that the chairman of the federal government had embezzled $ 15,000 from the event's proceeds to finance a mistress. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, lost his US citizenship in 1943, which he had held since 1934, and was deported to Germany in 1945.

The man who stormed onto the stage to protest against Kuhn's speech was Isadore Greenbaum, a then 26-year-old unemployed Jewish plumber from Brooklyn . After his arrest, he was tried for disrupting the event. He testified that he did not attend the rally with the intention of disturbing it. But in view of Kuhn's anti-Semitic speech and the persecution of the Jews in Germany, he felt obliged to take action. When the judge asked whether it was not clear to him that people could have been killed during his action, he replied: "Do you not realize that many Jewish people were killed because of the persecution by those up there (= on the stage) Greenbaum was fined $ 25 but was paid by supporters.


publication

The film was released as online video on The Atlantic on October 10, 2017 . It was then shown on the big screen for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018. Currently (January 2019) it can be viewed online both at The Atlantic and at the co-producer Field of Vision .

Nominations

The film was nominated in the category “Best Documentary Short Film” for the 2019 Academy Awards.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Q&A with 'A Night at The Garden' director Marshall Curry. In: Field of Vision. October 13, 2017, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b The Academy Awards 2019. In: oscars.org. Retrieved January 22, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Philip Bump: When Nazis rallied in Manhattan, one working-class Jewish man from Brooklyn took them on. In: The Washington Post . October 17, 2017, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  4. ^ Isadore Greenbaum: One Jew and 20,000 Nazis. In: HAMEC Blog (Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center). March 2, 2019, accessed July 2, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Emily Buder: When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City. In: The Atlantic. October 10, 2017, accessed January 23, 2019 .

Web links