There are no miracles

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Movie
German title There are no miracles
Original title Milagros no hay. Los desaparecidos de Mercedes-Benz
Country of production Argentina
original language Spanish
Publishing year 2003 + updates 2008, 2012 and 2017
length 114 / or 90 minutes
Rod
Director Gaby Weber
production Gaby Weber

There are no miracles (original title: Milagros no hay. Los desaparecidos de Mercedes Benz ) is a documentary by Gaby Weber from 2003, which is supposed to show what happened at Mercedes-Benz Argentina from 1976 to 1977.

prehistory

Due to the military coup in Argentina, which also had the goal of changing the entire economic model, Mercedes-Benz Argentina had developed into a center of the labor movement. Since the actual Smata union did not stand behind the workers, but worked together with the company management, the workers organized themselves and unauthorized strikes took place. They resisted the changes that the new government brought with it, which caused Mercedes-Benz Argentina to import more and lay off people. As a result, there were further arbitrary strikes and sabotage.

action

In the documentation, witnesses, victims or their survivors are interviewed. It deals with the involvement of Mercedes-Benz Argentina in crimes during the period of the Argentine military dictatorship and the efforts to bring the company to justice in Argentina , Germany and the USA . At that time, a total of seventeen trade unionists from Mercedes-Benz Argentina were kidnapped, taken to torture centers or murdered. Only two survived, and there is still no trace of fifteen others. The company management is accused of having worked together with the Argentine military, which was currently also the main buyer of their Unimog , and thus betrayed and handed over their uncomfortable unionists, who were at the same time the most capable and most combative workers.

After the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina, a trial in the USA is to clarify the complicity of the Mercedes-Benz Argentina company in the kidnapping of workers.

A committee of inquiry in Argentina is investigating the allegations. While the then HR manager of Mercedes-Benz Argentina denied having forwarded lists of unpleasant employees, the legal counsel Ruben Pablo Cuevas explained during his questioning that part of his job would have been to hand over a list of names to the authorities. Other managers claim that they cannot remember it because it would have happened too long ago and during this time. But there is a decree from 1975 in the archives of Daimler-Benz in which Carlos Ruckauf, at the time labor minister in Argentina , tasked the military with the eradication of the “factory guerrilla” of the whole country, including Mercedes-Benz Argentina . This eradication of the subversive forces had to be done and financed by someone. There are also documents that prove that 1 percent of sales were paid into a secret fund to which only the “Smata” management had access. Its members did not hear about it, which ultimately led them to found their own union, but the Group of Nine, which Mercedes-Benz did not recognize.

This is followed by statements from managers such as the head of production at Mercedes, Juan Ronaldo Tasselkraut. He recalls that during this time productivity fell to 30 percent due to sabotage, until after a while it normalized and the acts of sabotage could be stopped. When asked by the court, "Was there a connection with the murders of the works councils?", He simply replied: "There are no miracles, Your Honor". Gaby Weber comments on this with the words: "An obviously logical conclusion, because the profit is based on the productivity that the managers wanted to maintain at all costs."

With the return of democracy in Argentina under Raúl Alfonsín, there are more and more children and grandchildren who cannot be left with the fate of their abducted family members. They organize and it comes to light that the alleged torturer Rubén Lavallén was also a child robber. From his later position as head of security at Mercedes, where he claims to earn five times as much as before as police commissioner, he had brought the company to deliver medical equipment for premature babies to the Campo de Mayo military hospital . There, pregnant prisoners gave birth to their children before they were murdered. Five of these babies were adopted by Mercedes managers, as Gaby Weber found out. Justiziar Ruben Pablo Cuevas confirmed these deliveries before the tribunal as a charitable donation to a hospital.

Based on a report by Gaby Weber in 1999 on The Disappeared Works Councils at Mercedes-Benz , a German lawyer also charges the company with aiding and abetting murder. As a result, shareholders want to take responsibility and commission the lawyer and international law expert Christian Tomuschat from Berlin to issue the company with an ethical certificate, because Mercedes-Benz would have voluntarily signed "The Global Compact" and thereby promised to respect the rights of workers.

After Tomuschat has completed his allegedly completely independent investigations, Gaby Weber goes looking for clues again and questions the former union member Eduardo Fachal. He states that Tomuschat did not listen to him at all and that the report was full of lies and one-sidedness. In this report, Mercedes-Benz Argentina was acquitted of any responsibility for the deaths of its colleagues, although it clearly admitted that it had close contacts with the military and even listed lists of meetings between the company boss and the military. There he would have asked for the abduction of company employees to be stopped, as there would slowly be unrest among the workforce.

In addition to the German court, there is also a lawsuit in the USA against Mercedes-Benz, which is permissible there in the event of international human rights violations. But this is also hesitating because the process is linked to another and Mercedes does not recognize that the company can be indicted in the USA. But since there are subsidiaries in the USA, the American judiciary sees the case differently. That is why even Angela Merkel intervened and in the end the process remained in limbo and no one has been held responsible until today (2013).

Individual statements

Hector Ratto was abducted and says that one of the managers gave the police the address of Diego Nunez and that he disappeared forever that same night. Where he was held prisoner he could hear the voices of his colleagues Gigerna, Mosquera, Arenas, Leichner and Delconnte. He was interrogated, beaten and shocked with electric batons. As a result, his arms were paralyzed for four weeks.

Nuncia Belmonte reports on the efforts to speak to the President. He promised his help, but nothing happened, which confirms her opinion that there is no justice in her country.

Alfredo Martin worked for Mercedes-Benz for 36 years and claims to have been kidnapped on the night of December 14, 1976 with brutal violence, tied up and hooded. He was tortured physically and mentally and interrogated through his work colleagues. The next morning he was released again and at the factory he was already expected by Körten, Tasselkraut and Ceriani, who obviously knew that he had been abducted. Two years later, a new security chief was hired at Mercedes, whose voice he recognized and heard the night he was tortured. A voice that he would take with him to the grave, that of Rubén Lavallén.

Gregorio Grieco reports on his brother, who worked for Mercedes-Benz Argentina and who took part in clashes against the Smata . Although he then distanced himself from it for private reasons and gave up his job, he was abducted on December 14, 1976. Likewise his colleague José Vizzini. Neither of them ever come back and Vizzini's wife will continue to pay her husband's wages from Mercedes for 10 years. Allegedly, the Smata union put pressure on the company's management in this regard. Ms. Vizzini refuses to testify before the tribunal and does not want to talk about the past.

Maria Luján Ramos-Reimer, the wife of the head of the Group of Nine reports to the tribunal about negotiations between her husband and his colleagues with Smata and the managers of Mercedes. He would have been amazed by the concessions his negotiating partners suddenly made and said: "Something is wrong here". Her husband was abducted by gunmen that night. The same happened to his colleague Hugo Ventura. Before the tribunal, a witness testifies that he saw the two of them in a police station, the head of which was Rubén Lavallén, who was later hired as head of security at Mercedes. Despite years of searching, Ramos-Reimer and Ventura were never seen again. Rubén Lavallén stated in his defense before the tribunal that there were areas in “his” police station that were subordinate to the military and for which he was not responsible.

Eduardo Fachal is interviewed by Gaby Weber and he reports that, as a member of the Group of Nine , like his colleagues, he was no longer able to protest after the kidnapping of Ramos-Reimer and Ventura. He had moved several times for security reasons and fear for her life had overcame her fight. The group of nine stopped their work and Smata had sole power again.

History of origin

In Buenos Aires living journalist Gaby Weber began in 1999 for the radio of the West German Radio about the allegations against Mercedes-Benz Argentina to investigate. Weber financed the film himself, with the exception of a donation from the “Stiftung Umverteilen” (Redistribution Foundation). The film was completed in 2003 in Spanish and German. The original version was almost two hours long and was shown on Argentine television.

After that, the film was updated in 2008 and 2012 and shortened to 90 minutes. Weber had unsuccessfully offered this version to several ARD broadcasters for broadcast.

publication

The Spanish version was shown on several South American channels during prime time. It was presented in the Argentine parliament and is to be declared a "national interest". The Labornet shows the complete German version, he can also be seen on Youtube .

controversy

The WDR has commissioned the production company tvschoenfilm to shoot a documentary on this topic. This film was broadcast on December 2, 2013 on ARD under the title “Mercedes-Benz Argentina - A Group and its Responsibility”. The production company states that the documentation is supported by the writer Osvaldo Bayer , the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel , Argentine and German human rights organizations, former activists at Mercedes-Benz Argentina and the lawyer in the current US case, Terry Collingsworth.

Weber sees this film as “a textbook example of copying, hushing up and trivializing”, and he also conceals essential allegations. The film had third parties retell her long-term research. He is not his own journalistic achievement, brings no new facts and defuses or withholds the allegations. The documents she found would be presented as her own research, without any indication of the source. Gaby Weber's view that the new documentary was merely based on her film was adopted in various weblogs .

The daily newspaper Neues Deutschland describes the film by tvschoenfilm as the "soft version of the Daimler murders".

The WDR and the production company reject Weber's allegations. The journalist Fritz Wolf, a former member of the Grimme Prize jury, sometimes criticizes Weber's claims as "diaper-soft". Wolf further argues that the film is completely unsuitable for public television:

“Gaby Weber calls her film 'a research' even in the subtitle. Most of the time it is. In it, she presents her research results in detail. [...] The film documents all of this, in the best sense of the word. But that alone doesn't make a movie. There is a lack of dramaturgy, structure and rhythm. In between, the author herself appears with statements, in an awkward form that she would probably not have been able to get away with on any broadcaster in the world. [...] The design may have been a reason ten years ago not to include the film in the television program. Today, in the age of formatted broadcast slots, he's definitely one. [...] "

- Fritz Wolf

In a statement from WDR, Artistic Director Tom Buhrow replied as follows:

"[...] Regarding your allegation of plagiarism, it must be said that actual events, be it in the form of historical events, current events or events in the life of a person, are not protected by copyright and can therefore be freely used. Everyone can report on actual events. Copyright does not want to create a reporting monopoly. The documentation 'Mercedes-Benz Argentina' is neither in whole nor in part plagiarism. [...] "

- Tom Buhrow

In the ver.di magazine M (edition 08/2013), Harald Neuber addresses the WDR remake of Weber's documentation and its weaknesses in terms of content.

Both WDR and tvschoenfilm commented again and criticized the portrayal of the author Harald Neuber and emphasized that their documentation is in no way plagiarized.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Milagros no hay. Los desaparecidos de Mercedes Benz in the Internet Movie Database. Accessed December 19, 2013
  2. ↑ a b Mercedes-Benz Argentina - A corporation and its responsibility. A clarification on allegations. tvschoenfilm.com, December 2013, accessed January 30, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Exemplary: WDR commissions business partners of Mercedes-Benz with “critical” Mercedes-Benz documentary ... On kanzleikompa.de , from December 3, 2013, accessed on December 19, 2013
  4. ↑ Harald Neuber: Soft version of the Daimler murders - WDR documentary about the crimes of Mercedes in Argentina. new germany, October 14, 2013, accessed on January 24, 2014 .
  5. ↑ "Who owns the story? The conflict over 'Mercedes-Benz Argentina'", epd medien No. 3 from January 17, 2014, pages 5–7
  6. ↑ "Who owns the story? The conflict over 'Mercedes-Benz Argentina'", epd medien No. 3 from January 17, 2014, page 6
  7. ^ Answer of the WDR director Tom Buhrow. January 22, 2014, accessed February 14, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Harald Neuber: The double documentary. Retrieved February 14, 2014 .
  9. ↑ ver.di letters to the editor. Retrieved February 14, 2014 .