The murder of Jews - Germans and Austrians report

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Movie
Original title The murder of Jews - Germans and Austrians report
Country of production Belgium
original language German
Publishing year 1998
length 310 minutes
Rod
Director Michel Alexandre
music Michel Alexandre
camera Eugen Essig, Annik Flamme, Peter Kasperak, Martin Lippe, Antonie Meert, Henning Korwin Niemeyer, Clemens Reinelt, Freddy Rents, Zoltan Tobolik
cut Micha Wald, Anne Schroeder, Julien Contreau, Markus Meckl

The murder of Jews - Germans and Austrians report is a five-hour documentary film by the Belgian journalist and author Michel Alexandre from 1998. The film shows interviews with 36 contemporary witnesses and deals with the question of contemporary knowledge of the Holocaust not directly involved, but also by individuals Nazi perpetrators and victims.

The film was broadcast on WDR shortly before the 60th anniversary of the November pogroms on November 5, 1998 .

The book of the same name was published in 1998 by Egmont Verlagsgesellschaft .

Self-description of the director

Michel Alexandre in the opening credits to his film:

“A childhood friend from America came to visit. As always, we talked first about politics. To my astonishment he declared the millions of times the Nazis murdered the Jews as an invention - invented by the Jews themselves in order to blackmail the Germans. I was horrified and decided to investigate the truth. To interview Germans and Austrians who witnessed these events. Until then, I only knew the statements of the victims, the survivors. But how did the Germans and Austrians experience the murder of the Jews? How did you find out about him and when? I wanted to research that, I wanted to prove it. Not everyone I wanted to speak to answered me. Those who remembered the truth and testified in front of the camera are also witnesses to history. "

Interview partner (alphabetical selection)

content

The film shows the interviews conducted by Michel Alexandre over a period of more than ten years in Germany and Austria.

The eyewitnesses' memories cover the time from the Anschluss of Austria through the so-called Reichskristallnacht to the deportation to extermination camps and the planned murder of many thousands of people in local massacres during the Second World War . Some of the people interviewed give information that they had received from a chance encounter with those directly involved, such as SS members . Many interviewees were members of the Wehrmacht (soldiers, military chaplains , troop doctors ) and learned of systematic killings through their own observations during their frontline operations. The perpetrators and victims involved in the film describe their personal perceptions.

Alexandre asks his interlocutors briefly, directly and specifically.

The detailed answers often reveal a conflict of conscience among the involuntary confidante, who kept their knowledge of the Nazi dictatorship secret because of a possible criminal liability, for example under the treachery law , and were unable to prevent further crimes, not even with the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 .

Unlike many who remained silent in the post-war period or who denied the Holocaust , the contemporary witnesses in the film are ready to reveal what they knew at the time.

The statements are supported, among other things, by the findings of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg, the Institute for Contemporary History and the Austrian scientist Walter Manoschek .

reception

In contrast to the 1985 documentary Shoah by Claude Lanzmann , Der Judenmord remained largely unknown in Germany and Austria.

Movie

  • The murder of the Jews. Germans and Austrians report. Followed by a 45-minute film review with Michel Alexandre, Wolfgang Benz and Egon Netenjakob , moderated by Klaus Liebe (WDR).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The murder of Jews - Germans and Austrians report. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Michel Alexandre: The murder of Jews. Germans and Austrians report. Egmont Vgs, 1998. ISBN 978-3802526107
  3. ↑ " Those are the two hours that cost me seven years ..." ORF TVThek, August 8, 1983
  4. ↑ The murder of the Jews. Germans and Austrians report. on YouTube , accessed November 3, 2019.