Tag Archives: jews

Skip’s Quips: The Horror of ‘Jud Süß’

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Blog Sketch 082813Everyone should see the movie Jud Süß.

There’s a reason for that: It’s one of the most horrifying pictures ever made. This is slickly crafted Nazi propaganda, a wartime movie that viciously portrays Jews as evil, conniving monsters out to rape non-Jewish women and destroy others while making oodles of money. I watched this film recently because I believed I needed to see it as part of my cinematic education.

I’m glad I did.

It’s a monument to the tyranny of the Third Reich and extremely disturbing. It also has strong production values and impassioned acting, which contributed to its effectiveness as propaganda. I can only wonder what its impact was when it debuted in Germany to already anti-Semitic audiences. It must’ve been scary.

I don’t think this is a movie that should be seen without context. Instead, it should be shown in museums and schools as part of an educational initiative. No one should forget what atrocities the Nazis committed, and this film is part of its effort to blame the Jews for all kinds of problems. As a Jew, I believe it’s essential to see this movie with the perspective that the Nazi regime used all kinds of tools to convey its vile, racist ideology. Everyone should remember what happened. Watching this picture is a way to do so.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: On Israel, ‘Genocide’ and Celebrity Politics

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613I was not delighted to read the recent news report about Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Pedro Almodovar calling Israel’s ongoing Gaza Strip initiative a “genocide.”

These are very talented people, especially Almodovar, whose films I like very much. Unfortunately, calling Israel’s operation a genocide smacks to me of ignorance and anti-Semitism. It’s a way of turning around Jews’ experience in the Holocaust to suggest the victims of that era are now the perpetrators of an operation that seeks the extermination of a population, and that’s just not the case.

Full disclosure: I’m Jewish. I have positive feelings for Israel in my blood – my mother raised money for the country when I was an infant – and although I don’t agree with all of its policies, I support its right to exist. I also support the right of celebrities to say any ludicrous thing that comes to their minds, as everyone should have freedom of speech. Sadly, it has become fashionable to single out Israel as a “fascist” or “Nazi”-like state effecting a genocide in the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel’s activities bear no resemblance to the Nazis’ attempt to eradicate Jews in the early part of the last century.

There’s no comparison. I know. I interviewed two Holocaust survivors when I was in seventh grade, and I’ll never forget the horrors they recounted to me. It’s not the same thing. The Nazis were a different animal. They sought the systematic destruction of the Jews, both physically and psychologically. They sought genocide. The two people I interviewed were witnesses.

I don’t believe in violence as a solution to the problems of living in this world. But I also don’t believe in the misuse of words to address political sentiments. Those who argue that Israel is committing genocide should reexamine their claims in light of actual attempts at genocide in recent history – including the Holocaust, the Turkish genocide of Armenians in the early 20th century and the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s. I encourage Cruz, Bardem, Almodovar and others to think further on these events, study them, before making a determination. Hopefully, they’ll come to a more educated conclusion.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: My Problem With ‘Schindler’s List’

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ISetter Drawing for Blog 082613 suppose I’m being unfair, but I’ve always had an issue with Schindler’s List in that it doesn’t show the full extent of the torture the Nazis put their victims through.

Don’t get me wrong; cinematically, this movie’s a masterpiece. Yet I have personal reasons for my problem with the film, and it’s because I knew people who survived the Holocaust and told me their story.

In seventh grade, my history class was given an assignment to write about someone who experienced World War II. Initially, I was going to speak to my grandmother about life in the United States during that time, but then my parents suggested another option: interviewing Jack and Bela, an elderly, married couple who worked as tailors in our Manhattan neighborhood.

They had been in Auschwitz.

I’ll never forget this interview. I recorded them and transcribed the conversation to paper. They told me horrifying things, one of which I’ll never forget … not because it was the most violent act the Nazis committed, but because of the humiliation involved. As I recall, I was told that in Auschwitz, if you had to use the toilet, you used it in public, and the Nazis slapped and/or insulted you while you were doing so — you couldn’t do your business in peace. Somehow this affected me strongly; out of all the monstrous events that occurred at Auschwitz, this was the one that bothered me most.

Why?

Perhaps it’s because the Nazis wanted to break the Jews and other victims. They wanted them to suffer as much as possible from a psychological as well as physical standpoint. And I think that’s what disturbed me about this. Their victims never had peace. Even in their most private moments, they were subjected to intrusion, humiliation.

I got a very good mark on my paper. I still have it somewhere. And I like Schindler’s List quite a bit — in fact, I think it’s one of Steven Spielberg’s greatest films. I don’t think it covers everything, though, and to the argument that asks, “How can it?” I say it did attempt to show many of the evils the Nazis perpetuated. It didn’t, however, show all of the humiliation people endured at their hands, and that’s something I feel is missing.

Jack and Bela endured this and survived it. To me, they will always be voices I remember.