Theresienstadt (film)

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Movie
Original title Theresienstadt. A documentary film from the Jewish settlement area
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1945
Rod
Director Kurt Gerron , Karel Pečený
script Kurt Gerron
camera Karel Pečený, Ivan Frič
cut Ivan Frič
occupation

In Theresienstadt ghetto called concentration camp imprisoned persons

Theresienstadt. A documentary film from the Jewish settlement area is a draft for a Nazi propaganda film produced by the Nazis in the style of the documentary film during the Nazi era , which was shot from August to September 1944. It was supposed to depict the supposedly good living conditions in the concentration camp Ghetto Theresienstadt (a Nazi assembly / concentration camp in what is now Terezín in the Czech Republic ) and thus contribute to the concealment of the Nazi regime's policy of extermination . A complete version, as far as it can be understood today, was shown internally in March / April 1945. It was never performed in public; the complete film copy has since been considered lost. Scenes from the footage were published in the post-war period.

The director and screenwriter of the film, the prisoner Kurt Gerron and most of the prominent involuntary "contributors" as well as almost all the child actors were deported to Auschwitz after the recordings and murdered there.

Plot (fragment)

The film shows the seemingly normal life of Jews in the Theresienstadt ghetto and follows a schematic daily routine. Among other things, work scenes of various craftsmen are shown with the note “they can pursue their professions in Theresienstadt”; artists (“a sculptor designing a fountain”) also have work. A barrack town is declared a “work center”. During scenes in a large sewing shop, the continuous "integration of those willing to work under the guidance of skilled workers" is claimed.

After “the end of the day”, “the leisure time is left to each individual” and is particularly popular, and the “football competition in the courtyard of a former barracks ” is attended by many spectators . With the remark "A steam bath is available to the population" you can see naked men showering. Also on display are the “central library with extensive scientific literature”, a “well-attended series of lectures on scientific and artistic topics”, as well as a “musical performance of a work by a Jewish composer living in Theresienstadt” by an orchestra. Allotment gardening within the Theresienstadt Fortress is referred to as “allotment gardens of the families, in which there is constant weeding and watering, but which bring a welcome allowance for the kitchen”.

Scenes of an obvious camp with wooden double bunk beds are accompanied by the comment: “Single women and girls make themselves comfortable in their women's home”.

Film production background

As an occupied country , Denmark was also confronted with persecution of the Jews. The Danish government demanded clarification about the fate of around 450 Danish Jews, most of whom had been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto . Adolf Eichmann finally granted representatives of the Danish government and the International Committee of the Red Cross permission to visit the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 23, 1944.

This visit was preceded by a series of "beautification measures" for months. In May 1944, 7,500 people were deported to Auschwitz in order to make the ghetto, which on average housed tens of thousands of people and was designed for only 7,000, appear less crowded. A facade was erected that concealed the real suffering of the Theresienstadt residents, which led to positive reports from the foreign delegates. This prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from inspecting any other camps in the east.

The decision to shoot the film was made shortly after the delegations' visit, ie on June 23, 1944. SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Günther , head of the Prague “ Central Office for the Settlement of the Jewish Question in Bohemia and Moravia ” is the client . Production started about seven weeks after the delegations' visit. A widespread misbelief is that Joseph Goebbels played a leading role, if not the leading position. In fact, the then Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich , bundled a certain amount of decision-making power in his position. He was responsible for all Nazi propaganda in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . This resulted in tension with the Reich Propaganda Ministry Goebbels. These were settled in the Goebbels-Heydrich agreement in 1941, which stipulated that any propaganda could only be directed against Goebbels' person. A provisional clause excluded SS activities. The entire film became a project of the SS, from whose management the Reich Propaganda Ministry was completely excluded.

The camp commandant's office under camp commandant Karl Rahm obliged the actor and director Kurt Gerron, who was murdered a few months later in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, to set up a production staff. At the same time, Gerron held the position of the game director, whose influence was of course severely curtailed. Eyewitnesses report that Gerron was watched every day by SS men who followed him everywhere and carefully inspected the setting of the camera themselves. Apparently they did not want to take any unnecessary risk in artistic processing that was too free. The camera team came from the Prague newsreel company Aktuellita , which was then headed by Karel Pečený. Gerron produced two versions of a script and one or two daily reports covering the eleven days of filming that are still preserved today. The material was cut in Prague without his supervision. The film was completed on March 28, 1945.

Several hundred extras appear in the film, including celebrities who should show themselves to the world as still alive. For some people these are the last portraits before their death.

The music for the film was recorded in August and September 1944 partly under Gerron's direction (or at least in his presence), partly under that of the composer Peter Deutsch . The performers were the orchestra conducted by Karel Ančerl with children from the camp, who performed the children's opera Brundibár , and the jazz band Ghetto Swingers .

Performances

The finished film was shown four times to a selected audience. At the end of March or beginning of April 1945 it was shown to the German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, Karl Hermann Frank, and high-ranking SS officers in the presence of Hans Günther and Karl Rahm. The demonstration took place in Prague's Czernin Palace , the seat of Frank. On April 6, 1945 in Theresienstadt he became the delegate of the International Red Cross Dr. Otto Lehner and Paul Dunant shown. The Swiss diplomat Buchmüller, SS-Standartenführer Erwin Weinmann , Legation Councilor Eberhard von Thadden and the envoy Erich von Luckwald , both functionaries of the Foreign Office, were there. On April 16, 1945, it was shown to the Swiss Benoît Musy , son of Jean-Marie Musy , in the presence of SS-Obersturmführer Franz Göring . On the same day it was shown to Rezsö Kasztner , representative of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee. Present were SS-Obersturmbannführer Hermann Krumey , SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Hunsche , Hans Günther, SS-Obersturmführer Gerhard Paul Günnel, Karl Rahm and the Jewish elder Benjamin Murmelstein .

Propagandist effect

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Section seems very speculative: "would, would have, ..."

Originally conceived to counter the rumors about the planned Nazi extermination abroad , numerous copies of the film would have been sent to international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross , neutral states and the Vatican . But since after the completion of the film on March 28, both ways and means of communication with foreign countries were denied, the film received no attention there either.

At this point in time, such a propaganda film would not have had any notable effect, especially since a detailed report on the organized killing machinery in Auschwitz reached abroad as early as May / June 1944 . Given the existence of the gas chambers , corresponding euphemistic propaganda would not have achieved the slightest. Finally, the ever-approaching Eastern Front exposed all those crimes that had been concealed up to that point and that had previously only reached foreign countries as testimony.

In The Secret Truth (1958), HG Adler reports on a newsreel from autumn 1944, in which a coffee house scene from the film and then pictures from the war front are shown, on which the narrator comments:

“While Jews sit and dance over coffee and cake in Theresienstadt, our soldiers carry all the burdens of a terrible war, hardship and privation in order to defend their homeland.”

Prominent protagonists

For the production of the film, several prominent personalities were forced to appear as protagonists. These prominent people included scientists, artists, politicians, industrialists and religious representatives of the time:

  • Maximilian Adler , Prague philologist and university professor (sequence 33)
  • Karel Ančerl , conductor (sequence 34)
  • Leo Baeck , rabbi (sequence 33)
  • David Cohen , historian and professor from Amsterdam (Sequence 32, 37)
  • Dr. jur. Alexander Cohn , Chamber judge from Berlin (sequence 33)
  • Ellie von Bleichröder (sequence 33)
  • Elisabeth Czech, the widow of a former Czech minister (sequence 34)
  • Heinrich Dessauer, Vienna (sequence 34)
  • Paul Eppstein (Sequence 6, 10)
  • Karel Fischer, conductor (sequence 1)
  • Johann Friedländer (sequence 6)
  • Max Friediger , Danish Chief Rabbi (Sequence 6)
  • Desider Friedmann , President of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (sequence 32)
  • Heinrich Gans, Vienna (sequence 34)
  • Kurt Gerron , director of the film Theresienstadt
  • Rolf Grabower , Berlin
  • Georg Gradnauer , German Social Democrat (sequence 6)
  • Friedrich Gutmann , Berlin (sequence 34)
  • Pavel Haas , composer from Brno (sequence 34)
  • Mrs. von Hennicke
  • Karl Löwenstein , banker (sequence 34)
  • Leo Löwenstein , German physicist and chemist from Aachen (sequence 34)
  • Franz Kahn , Zionist (sequence 34)
  • Ernst Kantorowicz , lawyer and SPD politician from Frankfurt (sequence 32)
  • Heinrich Klang , Austrian professor of law (sequence 33)
  • Alfred Klein, professor from Jena (sequence 33)
  • Philipp Kozower from the Jewish cultural community in Berlin and his wife
  • Hans Krása , composer from Prague (sequence 34)
  • Robert Mandler , Prague Jewish Religious Community (Sequence 34)
  • Carl Meinhard , actor and theater director (sequence 34)
  • Alfred Meissner , Czechoslovak Minister of Justice (sequence 6)
  • Léon Meyer (sequence 6)
  • Ove Meyer , industrialist (sequence 34)
  • Julius Moritz, Berlin (sequence 34)
  • Leon Neuberger, retired Austrian Colonel D.
  • Morits Oppenhejm and Melanie Oppenhejm, industrialist couple from Copenhagen, parents of Ralph Oppenhejm (sequence 34)
  • Benjamin Murmelstein , rabbi from Vienna and chairman of the council of elders in the Theresienstadt concentration camp (sequence 33)
  • Alfred Philippson , geographer from Bonn (sequence 33)
  • Dr. Ernst Rosenthal, member of the Jewish community from Berlin (sequence 34)
  • Julie Salinger , singer (sequence 8)
  • Rudolf Saudek , professor and sculptor from Leipzig (Sequence 28, 34)
  • Clara Schultz (sequence 6)
  • Ida Franziska Schneidhuber, first wife of the Munich SA-Obergruppenführer August Schneidhuber (sequence 33)
  • Coco Schumann , German jazz legend
  • Emil Sommer , Austrian general (sequence 6)
  • Erich Springer, Head of Surgery in the Ghetto (Sequence 34)
  • Otto Stargardt (sequence 33)
  • Artur Stein , professor from Prague (sequence 33)
  • Hermann Strauss , Professor (Sequence 33)
  • Leo Taussig , Prague psychologist and neurologist (sequence 33)
  • Emil Utitz , philosopher, psychologist and art theorist from Vienna (sequence 33)

Tradition and state of preservation

After the end of World War II , the 38-sequence final version of the film disappeared.

In 1964, a 15-minute fragment appeared in the Prague film archive . In 1987 more fragments were found in Yad Vashem .

Today it is only preserved in fragments; there are only a number of partly incomplete sequences. A Canadian version contains 23 minutes of the original 90 minutes:

Overview of the sequences and fragments obtained

sequence 1 2 3 4th 5 6th 7th 8th 9 10 11 12 13 14th 15th 16 17th 18th 19th
swell B, Y B, Y B * B * B * B, Y B, Y B * B * B, Y B ', Y' B * B, Y B, Y B, Y
sequence 20th 21st 22nd 23 24 25th 26th 27 28 29 30th 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
swell B * B * B * B * B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N B, F, N
B: Federal Archives - Filmarchiv , Berlin; F: Munich Film Museum ; N: Narodny filmový archív, Prague; Y: Yad Vashem , Jerusalem
* Single images (omission if complete sequence is available in the same place); x 'beginning

"The Führer gives the Jews a city"

The film is also known under the title The Führer gives the Jews a city . However, this popular title cannot be found either in Kurt Gerron's notes or in the film itself. It first appeared in memoirs of the ghetto inmates involved, also in the variant Adolf Hitler gives the Jews a city . The apparent cynicism of this film title is presented in this light as a sarcastic joke of those forced into film production. This is also how the guitarist and drummer Coco Schumann , then a camp inmate and musician of the jazz band Ghetto Swingers, sees it .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ghetto-theresienstadt.de
  2. ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 76 f.
  3. ↑ On this in particular the documentary Liga Terezin - It was a game against the Nazis by Oded Breda and Mike Schwartz.
  4. ↑ a b c Karel Margry: The concentration camp as an idyll: “Theresienstadt” - A documentary film from the Jewish settlement area ( Memento from April 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Cinematography of the Holocaust, project of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Frankfurt am Main.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Erwin Leiser: “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 77.
  6. ^ SS Propaganda: Idyll in the Ghetto. spiegel.de (photos).
  7. ↑ Kurt Gerron: Theresienstadt - A documentary from the Jewish settlement area ( Memento from February 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on cine-holocaust.de
  8. ^ Katja Iken: SS propaganda film "Theresienstadt". 90 minutes of lie. In: Spiegel Online. January 14, 2015, accessed January 14, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Cf. the memories of Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt , The Führer gives the Jews a city. Haude & Spenersche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1975.
  10. ^ Coco Schumann, Max Christian Graeff, Michaela Haas: The Ghetto Swinger. Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-24107-1 .
  11. ↑ A secret ghetto film. The Warsaw Ghetto and Nazi propaganda ( memento from June 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on 3sat.de