Holocaust Film before the Holocaust: DEFA, Antifascism and the Camps

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-134
Author(s):  
David Bathrick

AbstractThe period prior to the 1970s has frequently been portrayed internationally as one of public disavowal of the Jewish catastrophe politically and cinematically and as one in which there was a dearth of filmic representations of the Holocaust. In addition to the Hollywood productionsThe Diary of Anne Frank(1960), Stanley Kramer’sJudgment at Nuremberg(1961) and Sidney Lumet’sThe Pawnbroker(1965), one often spoke of just a few East and West European films emerging within a political and cultural landscape that was viewed by many as unable or unwilling to address the subject. This article takes issue with these assumptions by focusing on feature films made by DEFA between 1946 and 1963 in East Berlin’s Soviet Zone and in East Germany which had as their subject matter the persecution of Jews during the Third Reich.

Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.


Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni

Chapter 9 examines social-psychological approaches to understanding the Holocaust. Since Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were published in the early 1960s, social-psychological formulations based on obedience and social influence have dominated the psychology of the Holocaust. There is also a significant critical literature that challenges some of the findings and interpretation of Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo as they apply to the Holocaust. Social cognition is the study of thinking as situated in a social milieu and offers a fruitful framework for considering the ways Germans thought about one another during the Third Reich. Modern approaches to prejudice and racism, especially the study of unconscious or implicit biases, may provide insight into anti-Semitic attitudes prevalent in Germany (and elsewhere) during the Nazi years.


Author(s):  
Christopher R. Browning

This articles addresses genocide in the Nazi Empire. Genocide in the Nazi Empire issued from a confluence of traditions: anti-Semitism, racism, imperialism, and eugenics. None of these was unique to Germany, but they came together in a lethal combination in Germany under Nazi rule to provide the ideological underpinnings for three clusters of genocidal projects. The first was the ‘purification’ of the German race through the mass murder of the mentally and physically handicapped within the Third Reich and the expulsion and mass murder of ‘Gypsies’ from the Third Reich. The second was a demographic revolution or ethnic restructuring within the lands deemed to be Germany's future Lebensraum through the decimation, denationalization, and expulsion of the predominately Slavic populations living there. The third was the systematic and total mass murder of every Jew — the Holocaust.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (3 (239)) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Paweł Szuppe

Social Forms of Influence of Nazi Mysticism According to Polish Scholarly Literature The article presents the social forms of influence of Nazi mysticism through the lens of Polish literature on the subject. It analyses how the broadly understood propaganda of the Third Reich has influenced and shaped social attitudes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Hechler ◽  
Elizabeth C. Hamilton ◽  
Leo R. Kalkbrenner

This is an English translation of an article originally published in German on the T4 "euthanasia" program targeting disabled people during the Third Reich. The essay examines the contours of ableism in Germany that have allowed these killings to remain unreported and uncommemorated. The author focuses on the murder of his great-grandmother and its effects on four generations of his family. This essay provides a vital historical record as well as a model for reflecting upon and understanding the legacy of the Holocaust and the persistence of ableism.The original German essay was previously published in a series called Gegendiagnose. Beiträge zur radikalen Kritik an Psychologie und Psychiatrie. Psycho_Gesundheitspolitik im Kapitalismus. Vol. 1. Münster: edition-assemblage. August 2015. 


1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Michael H. Kater

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