Theresienstadt: The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews

[Ian David]

Run time: 03:56 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u8sIk8QQ5k   Posted on YouTube: April 17, 2015 By YouTube Member: YouTube Help Views on YouTube: 4287136   Posted on DU: March 02, 2007 By DU Member: Ian David Views on DU: 1585

 
See prior DU Thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=316&topic_id=1145&mesg_id=1145


THE BOOTLEG FILES: "THE FUHRER GIVES A CITY TO THE JEWS"
by Phil Hall
(2007-02-23)
BOOTLEG FILES 169: “The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews” (an astonishing 1944 Nazi propaganda charade).

LAST SEEN: Available online at YouTube (although not in the complete version).

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR DISAPPEARANCE: As with other Nazi-era propaganda, there is no commercial call for it.

CHANCES OF SEEING A DVD RELEASE: Unlikely.

Trying to apply the basic tenets of sanity to the propaganda films of Nazi Germany is a vain endeavor, since those delusional and vile movies exist in their own sphere of logic. But even within that sorry genre, the 1944 short film “The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews” is so outrageous that its very existence is mind-boggling.

In 1944, after repeated requests by the International Committee for the Red Cross to examine conditions in Nazi concentration camps across Europe, the German government decided to coordinate a heavily controlled tour of the Jewish ghetto at the Czechoslovakian town of Terezin (called Theresienstadt in Germans). Located outside of Prague, Theresienstadt was not a concentration camp, but rather was a temporary holding location where the deported Jews of Europe awaited their final journey to Auschwitz. A recorded 33,000 people died from hunger or disease from the miserable conditions at Theresienstadt.

For the Red Cross inspection, however, the Nazis turned Theresienstadt into a Potemkin village, complete with hasty paint jobs and the construction of facades for nonexistent shops and cafes. The overcrowded conditions were relieved by deporting thousands of Jewish inmates to Auschwitz. The Red Cross delegates must have been incredibly stupid, as they believed Theresienstadt to be a humane resettlement village for the Jewish people who were taken by force from their homes in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. (For the record, Denmark’s government was not fooled and successfully worked to get nearly all of the Danish Jews released from Theresienstadt before they could be shipped to Auschwitz.)

Buoyed by the charade pulled on the Red Cross, the Nazis decided to create a propaganda film to depict Theresienstadt as a model settlement for the Jewish people. Why this film was needed was never clear, since it obviously contradicted the Nazi goal of the Final Solution as determined by the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Furthermore, the film was designed to present a positive view of Jewish life, which also contradicted years of propaganda designed to demonize the European Jewish community as parasitic and bloodthirsty.

But the weirdest aspect of this production was the decision to have one of the Jewish inmates direct the film. Kurt Gerron, a German actor/director who was barred from the German film industry after the Nazi rise to power, was living in the Netherlands when he was arrested and sent to Theresienstadt. It is not clear why he was chosen to direct this propaganda film, nor is it clear whether he took the assignment happily or was forcibly coerced. In any event, Gerron wound up with the unhappy distinction of being the only Jewish artist to direct a movie in the World War II-era Nazi cinema.

The resulting film is known in English as “The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews” and it shows a happy day in the life of the “city” which the benevolent Adolf H. put aside for Europe’s Jews. On the surface, it all seems benign, almost to the point of being quotidian.

More:
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1894

See also:



Chilling `Prisoner' shows entertainer's fall to Nazis

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff, 12/12/2003

The popular German-Jewish entertainer and movie director Kurt Gerron had the grisly misfortune to have been handpicked by the Nazis in 1944 to shoot a film starring the prominent Jews who'd been forced to live in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Afterward, he was promptly put on a train to Auschwitz.

Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender's chilling and provocative documentary "Prisoner of Paradise" takes us through Gerron's career and his doomed arrival, outside Prague, at Theresienstadt, which was where the Jews whom the world would ostensibly miss (aristocrats, intellectuals, celebrities, scientists, etc.) were sent so that people could see that they weren't vanishing; they were living among themselves.

The Nazis wanted the casual observer to think the place was a resort. So they conscripted Gerron to film a beautified subterfuge, in which the concentration camp would seem a jolly model of community living. The truth is that its thousands of residents were all bound for firing squads and gassings.

The film combines found footage and interviews with survivors -- most of whom knew Gerron personally or professionally or both -- with several bizarre dramatic reenactments. It gets off to a terrifying start, inviting us to behold some of Gerron's completed film, "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews," which contains well-groomed children, citizens frolicking, and many other productive-looking people, only to pull the rug from beneath us in an effective "gotcha" manner. The frame freezes on a boy's face, and the volume on Ian Holm's otherwise solemn narration is raised slightly to explain that this "remarkable experiment in living" was, in fact, a lie. That's the kind of tone some horror films assume, and without forcing the issue, "Prisoner of Paradise" knows that it's a horror film, too.

One of Clarke and Sender's most jarring images is a black-and-white photograph of Gerron that becomes a haunting touchstone the movie revisits. His fleshy face is sculpted into something defiant and fearsome. It's the sort of expression that would become more familiar on Orson Welles. As the photo resurfaces and as we get a clearer sense of Gerron, the strength on that face seems to soften into some kind of confusion and, by the last time we see it, fear.

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2003/12/12/chilling_prisoner_shows_entertainers_fall_to_nazis

[pnorman]

1. Here's one (translated) Google hit:

http://tinyurl.com/2cve67

I had heard of this film, but had never seen it until now.

pnorman

[azurnoir]

2. The film was made in 1944

which is the reason fr the subterfuge, by that year the knew they were going to lose the war. By that time there had already been one mass escape from a concentration camp (Sobibor) and Jews and maybe others who were prisoners had managed to established communications with the outside world.
They had little to fear from the allies while the war was going on. The Allies took a "try to act surprised" attitude(at least from a command level) however until Russian and American soldiers had gotten far enough to liberate the camps, they did nothing even though they were aware of what was going on. The reason was that the Germans were pulling supplies, men, and transportation from the war effort to run the camps. In a way the Nazi's greatest evil was also their doom.
The reason I sure about the Allies having prior knowledge of the death camps are both historical accounts and I simply asked my father the question he is both a WW2 veteran and a Jew, his answer was that the US simply avoided sending Jewish soldiers into the European theater.