Rex Bloomstein
A Jew in the Cathedral
Rex Bloomstein - A Jew in the Cathedral
- Well, good evening everybody. I think there’s been a couple of lectures already today. So for those of you who’ve stayed or tuned in, thank you for doing that. The inspiration for this presentation, which I’ve called a Jew In The Cathedral, came from giving the annual Parkes lecture at South Hampton University here in the UK some years ago. It was created in the name of Reverend James Parkes, a man who dedicated his life to confronting antiSemitism, and the often agonising relations between Christians and Jews. The Jew was a perennial outsider, and the cathedral, that mysterious and magnificent place where God resides, but is often missing whilst terrible things happen outside. Now, I must be clear that this presentation tonight is not an historical or contemporary account of the relationship between the church and the synagogue fascinating as that may be. But rather, a symbol of my own compulsion, if that’s not too strong a word, to tackle Jewish subjects in a number of films and television programmes over a number of years. These are stories or themes which have affected Jews, and they affected me to the extent that I wanted to explore them in documentary form. I hope you’ll find interesting the excerpts that I’ll be showing as part of my own journey as a secular Jew. The films under discussion this evening began in the early 1980s and ended in 2005. The stories vary, but perhaps the overarching focus of these excerpts is the Holocaust or the Tremendum, as one theologian has called its catastrophic shadow which still haunts so much of the Jewish perspective. Auschwitz and the Allies was the first in this body of work. I was inspired to attempt this project by Sir Martin Gilbert’s book of the same name. Indeed, Martin’s collaboration was crucial, as was the contribution of the writer and historian, Piers Brendon. It was made for the BBC, almost two hours long, and broadcast in 1982. We asked, what did the Allies know about the greatest death camp in history? When did they hear about the plan to make Europe judenfrei? And could they have done more to rescue the Jews of Europe? Here is the view of the Jewish War veteran, Reuven Dafni, which begins the film.
I have no doubt that if the Allies wanted to help, if they would’ve bombed those god damn concentration camps, if they had to die, let them at least die from our bombs and not like they did. And if they would’ve tried to do, I mean, they could have disrupted the train, the railroad. They would’ve done a hundred of things, and I’m sure the Nazis would’ve reacted differently if they would’ve seen that somebody’s trying to do something. As it is, they knew that the whole world didn’t care. It was only Jews well with it. They knew it. I, for one, will never forgive, never forgive. I know that things could have been done, I know we could have helped, I know we could have saved. We had no means. That’s it. No more.
Several points emerged from our investigation. Firstly, we showed evidence of inertia, ineptitude, and downright callousness to the fate of the Jews in the British and American administrations. Secondly, the number of reports that emerged of the destruction process that were never acted upon including one from Gerhard Renner, a Jewish official in Geneva in 1942. Telling of a planned to kill all the Jews of Europe. Thirdly, the timorousness of American Jewry who failed to exert significant moral and political pressure on the Roosevelt administration. Fourthly, Josiah Dubois, an official in the US Treasury Department revealed to us that plans for the relief and rescue of Europe’s Jews were sabotaged by anti-Semites in the state Department. And fifth, the doomed attempts of Jewish organisations in 1944 to persuade the Allies to bomb the railway lines and gas chambers at Auschwitz. It brings me to our next excerpt. Could that have been done?
I think what I’d have done, it’s a small target. It’s not all that easy to identify. It would’ve been rather difficult to hit in our normal method, which consisted of my going in low level ground level and dropping out a marker, and the others bombing it from 16,000 feet. The reason being, they had a deep penetration bomb. In this case, I think that I’d have selected six aircraft to go in low and use a dive bombing technique because I don’t think that building was strong enough to withstand ordinary bombs dropped at low level. You have to dive into it of course, or the bombs will skip and jump. I’d have had the rest of the squadron either doing a diversionary attack, or somewhere in the vicinity ready to be called in in case we failed.
[Interviewer] There were four main crematoria. Do you think you could’ve destroyed them without killing thousands of people?
Your first question is could we have destroyed them? I think we might have destroyed three. We might not have destroyed all of them. You’re asking a lot. This extreme range in knowing that we got to probably get ourselves out without full cover of night ‘cause it’s summer now. I think we’d have done three. I don’t think we’d have had many mishits because we didn’t drop bombs unless we knew that we were aiming on the target. When you’re doing that low level, you know. I don’t feel I can be the man who judges its effectiveness. I question its effectiveness, but I state that as a pilot and as a member of bomber command, and in the name of the pilots of bomber command, we would’ve willingly done it. Whatever the risks, whatever the difficulties, if we’d received the request and if we’d known that it had come from the victims themselves.
Well, that was group Captain Cheshire, Leonard Cheshire VC, and there you have a very distinguished, remarkable man. He would’ve done it if he’d been asked. Will there ever be a final verdict on the bombing of the railway lines? I hope to explore this in greater depth in another lecture later this year. Virtually, all documentaries on the Holocaust include survivors. Their testament is at a unique perspective on life and death in the camps. During the research for Auschwitz and the Allies in 1981, I learned of a unique event happening that year. The world gathering of Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem. I went and filmed as several thousand survivors turned up, meet each other, many desperate to find lost or missing relatives, and to describe the indescribable. Back in London, I soon realised that this had to be a separate film. I called it “The Gathering,” and it was shown in the same week as “Auschwitz and the Allies” on BBC 2 in that autumn of 1982.
[Announcer] This is a world gathering of the Jewish Holocaust survivors, and the Holocaust reminds everybody today of the big Jewish tragedy on one hand, and of two important words related to the Holocaust. Survival and redemption.
From the same camp.
Do you know each other? Do you remember his face?
I know his brother. His brother survived.
My younger brother was his friend.
You two talk to each other. Don’t talk to me.
I was 14 years of age.
[Interviewer] How many camps were you in?
I was in the ghetto, I was in Auschwitz, I was in Dachau. I was…
He had enough. We all had enough.
[Survivor 1] My parents was taken away to Treblinka. I’m the only survivor.
[Survivor 2] We did not consider ourselves as human beings. We did not consider ourselves as women.
Dr. Mengele pulled me out.
I lost in Auschwitz my father, three of my sisters with their babies.
People walked around like in a daze.
Distant relatives like uncles, and aunts, and cousins.
[Survivor 3] My father, my mother, I dunno. Must be Auschwitz.
[Survivor 4] We came to Bergen-Belsen and that’s what finished us.
[Survivor 5] I lost my brothers, three brothers.
[Survivor 6] I’m looking for my old family that I lost in Lubuk.
[Survivor 6] We haven’t even got a grave even to go to say a prayer.
[Survivor 7] I was there like in a dream.
[Survivor 8] We lost so much, so many girls that I knew, and I lost my whole family. I had only one sister left from seven.
[Survivor 9] I lost my father.
[Survivor 10] I was only 14 years old then.
[Survivor 11] We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.
[Survivor 12] And I saw even building the crematorium.
[Survivor 13] We never saw her again.
[Survivor 14] We didn’t believe it will be for us.
[Survivor 15] You see that smoke in the sky, that’s where you will go. I lost my father, two sisters, and one brother, my aunts, and uncles, my mother.
The sequence I always find very haunting, I remember I was in a great hall in Jerusalem, and the memories come back to me of all these people putting posters on the walls and writing their names and writing names of lost relatives. They should have preserved the wall, just kept it. It was so haunting. History it seems is always contested. Whose truth prevails? In 1986, having left the BBC and working at Thames Television, I came across a story concerning Israel that intrigued me. A controversy that had not gone away, and yet I felt was not widely known. It seems that during the Six Day War, a deadly attack occurred on the USS Liberty, an American spy ship. An attack not by any of the Arab countries, but by Israel. Hard to believe. I investigated further with the help of the two Israeli journalists whose article had spurred my interest, and in the end made this film for Thames TV. Here’s the opening sequence of “Attack On The Liberty.”
[Narrator] These home movies were made by members of the crew of the USS Liberty, a spy ship operated by America’s National Security Agency. Many of these men were soon to be killed or wounded under circumstances that have remained a mystery ever since. The survivors insist that there has been a 20 year coverup about the fate of the Liberty. The ship’s final voyage began in June, 1967 when it was sent to eavesdrop on the impending war between the Arabs and the Israelis.
[Crowd] Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel! On June 8th, four days into the Six Day War, the Liberty was alone and lightly armed about 15 miles of the coast of Egypt. Meanwhile, five urgent messages from Washington instructing her to withdraw 100 miles from the war zone had been misrouted. Not one reached the Liberty. This failure of communication, later described as the worst in American peacetime history, proved catastrophic.
Well, that failure was indeed catastrophic. For suddenly out of the sky, the ship was strafed by jet fighters and torpedoed by gunboats. 65 minutes of bloodshed left 34 sailors dead, nearly 200 maimed and wounded. Israel apologised and payed several millions in reparations claiming it was a tragic case, a mistaken identity for an Egyptian warship. To this day, the survivors of the Liberty believed the attack was premeditated and a crime. Our next excerpt.
Either we crewmen are lying about it, or Israel is lying about it, and this simply has to be resolved. You have the Israeli claim that they did not see a flag, you’ve got crewmen and ship’s logs, and evidence that there was a flag. You’ve got other claims that, well, if there was a flag and hung limp at the mast, you’ve got logs which show that the flag hung out clearly displayed in a good breeze, 12 knots of wind where it could not possibly not have been seen. The Israelis claim that we refused to identify ourselves. We’ve got men on the ship who will swear before Congress or anybody that’s willing to listen that we flashed our identity repeatedly to those ships, and that they did not pay any attention. The Israelis claim they circled us with aircraft looking for identification before they attacked. Absolute baloney. I could march 40 men in front of this camera this afternoon that will tell you that nobody circled that ship before it was attacked. They came in shooting. There’s no way in the world that it could be anything but a deliberate attack. It was a deliberate attack, period.
So what was the truth? The fog of war, or a scandalous coverup? I went to Israel and America to find out. In the US, I spoke to survivors, diplomats, politicians convinced the attack was deliberate. In Israel, again, I again spoke to senior military figures, including those in command at naval headquarters and who manned the gunboats. They insisted the opposite and told an extraordinary story of communication failure, misidentification, and the stress and panic of war. I approached the Israeli Air Force to speak to the pilots, but the Air Force said no. They were too concerned for their pilots’ safety. So what could have been the motive for the attack? Ernest Castle was attached to the American Embassy at the time, and here he is.
Let us presume the Israeli high command were so fearful that the United States would learn of what was an evident Israeli plan to take the Golan, or any other plan on the part of the Israelis where they say, “My golly, that will irritate the United States, our great friend. We better not do that or let that happen so let’s sink their ship instead.” That’s how I address anyone who thinks the Israelis purposely sunk that ship to keep us from knowing something.
Well, having sifted and weighed the evidence, I came to my own conclusion as to whether the attack on the Liberty was a tragic mistake, or a deliberate and calculated assault on the ship. I believe I presented both sides fairly, but because I couldn’t interview the pilots, I left the verdict to the viewer. In hindsight, I’m not sure I was right about that. So next month, I’m going to explore this in greater depth, and for what it’s worth, reveal what I felt then at the time and still feel is the truth. Let’s see if you agree with me. Three years later, in 1989, again for Thames Television, I produced “The Longest Hatred.” A three-part series on the history of antisemitism, a subject hitherto not explored in any real depth on television. It’s when I became the Jew in the Cathedral who used traditional filmmaking elements of music, commentary, photographs, news footage, and interviews with historians to carry the narrative forward. Professor Robert Wistrich wrote the script with me, bringing his profound knowledge of the historical background. This is how the series began.
All Jews are clannish, all Jews are loners, all Jews look like everybody else, all Jews look absolutely different from everybody else, all Jews are communists and anarchists, all Jews are bankers and capitalists, all Jews love money, all Jews despise worldly goods. In other words, the image of the Jew is a protean one. It shifts, that’s what’s so nice about this image. It isn’t just that the Jews are X, the Jews are everything that you don’t want yourself to be. The Jews are everything that threatens you.
Without Christian anti-Jewish perspective that lasted for a long time, if you removed that, I think the Holocaust would not have happened. Now that’s not to say that that Christian anti-Judaism by itself caused the Holocaust, but I think it was what we would call philosophically a necessary condition for it.
[Narrator] This series is about antisemitism, which is being described as the longest and deepest hatred of human history. A religious hatred, a political hatred, an ideological hatred of the ancient people of God. The Jewish people.
No other religion makes the accusation that Christianity makes against the Jews, that they’re literally murderers of God. When you ask what does it mean to be a murderer of God, then you have to say that it means to kick over all moral traces. To be a murderer of God means to be the opponent of anything decent, anything humane, anything moral, anything ethical.
[Narrator] Rome, once capital of a great empire, is today still the centre of the universal Catholic church. The largest of all Christian denominations. Christianity, religion of faith, hope, and love. Worshipping as its God Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew crucified on the cross in Roman Palestine nearly 2,000 years ago. How did the cross become twisted into the swastika by the followers of Adolph Hitler? Nazism, a modern secular religion with its echoes of pagan Rome, with its Caesars, its endless wars, it’s bread and circuses for the masses. A creed not of love, but of hate; not of faith, but despair; not of compassion, but boundless cruelty. It’s symbol, the swastika, the broken cross, which became a state religion in Nazi Germany before sweeping across Europe only 50 years ago. Why did millions of Christians participate as perpetrators, collaborators, or silent bystanders as 6 million Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered all over Europe? On what Christian soil was this abyss of hatred and mass murder possible?
The programme outlined the remarkable survival of the Jews against centuries of accusation, discrimination, massacre, pogrom, culminating in Nazi Germany in the 20th century. Beginning with the significance of the year 1989, part two looked at the development of a new antisemitism in the Soviet Union as it then was, as well as in Poland, and Austria, France, and Germany. Part three examined the paradox of antisemitism in the Arab world with particular focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also featured opposing Palestinian and Israeli views. Here is Hanan Ashrawi, professor of English at Birzeit University on the West Bank, and a senior Palestinian figure.
As again, a victim of racism, and I think what is happening in Israel is an emergence of a very disturbing and alarming type of racism. The dehumanisation of the Palestinian, and in the West there was the demonization of the Arab. So in many ways this emerging racism which devalues human life and Palestinian life will ultimately backfire on the people, or on the person, or on the group who have this perception and who use it freely. And I think Israel in a sense is going to suffer because it has allowed itself to become a racist state, it has allowed itself to dehumanise the Palestinians and to deal with them as subhuman creatures, and therefore try to avoid the consequences of their own actions. I do not condone it, I do not accept it for myself, I don’t want to be its victim, and I will not use it to victimise others either ‘cause once you strip others of their humanity, you yourself lose a great deal of your own humanity in the first place to be able to do that.
We seem to be having a technical problem here. Is that right, Lauren?
[Lauren] Yeah, sorry, it’s the internet. There’s nothing I can do about it.
Do apologise to everybody, but the net does seem to create these intermittent signal and we get this moment. I’ll talk through it a little bit 'til it comes on. Hanan was a very interesting woman, very interesting to deal with, and she agreed to speak. What I was concerned was to get her to explain, to confront antisemitism. How did she feel about it? You know, it’s a very uncomfortable subject in the conflict. I mean, you know, as you’ve heard her say already, that racism is something they encountered. I felt a number of Palestinians accepted the reality of Holocaust. Of course, in other parts of the Arab world, they don’t, there’s some appalling revisionism. For instance, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is still sold in shops all over Europe and rather, the Middle East. And so this, you know, this is a reality and the stereotyping of Jews. We interviewed a member, a cartoonist who basically caricatured Jews just as Der Stuermer did. You found these tropes, these characterizations. I mean, they’re still, you know, played out in this sort of struggle for identity and the like. I mean, it was a very remarkable experience going to Cairo, going to these various countries to see how Jewish people in history and now and Israel all combined to make very complex, contradictory, painful realities.
[Interviewer] But if Palestinians and other Arabs continually vilify Israel acting as Nazis, which surely there is no real comparison between the extermination camps, between the ghettoization, between the horrors of Nazi Germany after you and I are free to speak, this never happened. If this sort of vilification goes on, how can there be dialogue?
I think that-
[Interviewer] How can the Jews trust Palestinians not to drive them into the sea, not to want to destroy them?
Because they have had the experience of Palestinians. They should know better. They cannot claim ignorance as an excuse. This is very clear to me. I do not make the analogy between Israel and Nazism. I do not like it, and I will not approve of it. But at the same time, I will not allow other people’s suffering to give them the right to make me suffer. Now this is one aspect. Another aspect is this quantification of pain. Of course, no two pains are the same and you cannot say who suffered more. But the fact is that people have suffered. I will not sit there and measure pain. I will not sit there and tell you your pain is greater and my pain is. There is no justification for any pain whatsoever, there is no justification for the victimisation of others in any way. And therefore, it seems to me that whether the analogy holds or doesn’t hold, and the unique fact of the Palestinian suffering is real to me. We do not measure it. We do not play a game of one-upmanship when it comes to suffering, and therefore, we have to deal with it as an abhorrent human experience that should be stopped and avoided. And therefore, it should give us the depth, the sensitivity, the perception to try to deal with each other, to reach each other in a more human way.
Sorry about that, but I think perhaps you got the gist of it. I think Hanan tried to come to terms with it but, you know, as a spokesperson for the Palestinians, it was all part of this tremendous political debate, and what was she prepared to say, what could she say, and so on. But a very interesting experience in all ways. And the film was shown around, you know, in many countries. Now with a bit of luck and if the net holds in complete contrast, if I may, I had the joyous experience of making a film about a humour I’ve always loved, American Jewish humour, which was broadcast in 1990 on the BBC Art Series Arena. Some of you may recall the lecture I gave earlier in the year on this theme, and I hope you’ll forgive my repeating a couple of the interviews for those who may not have seen it. It’s once estimated that over 70% of people in the comedy business in the US were Jews despite, for instance, it being written there is little in the Jewish experience and even less in Jewish tradition to dispose one to laughter. Perhaps that influenced my decision to call this 90 minute celebration, “Next Time Dear God, Please Choose Someone Else.” Anyway, here is Robert Klein, if we’re lucky, one of the many comedians featured in the film, reflecting on acceptance and identity. Well done, Lauren. It’s coming up now, Robert Klein.
I have made it a point in my work, in my monologue to talk about the Jewish experience. It is the honeymoon for, well, I mean, as a culture, as a people, we are doing better than ever before. Considering we started from the dumps, I might say, in my lifetime still. It’s why it pains me when I had a young lady on my staff and she never heard of the Holocaust 'til she saw it on NBC, you know, a series. This is to me heartbreaking. Not because that we should keep living this horror every day, but that people should know what happened. It’s terribly important. But just like Richard Pryor, whose work I respect enormously, talks about the Black experience. He doesn’t say this is the Black. He talks about himself as a Black man, and I talk about myself often as a Jewish man. My formative adult experience was very much lined. My undergraduate experience at a small, very fine liberal arts college in western New York called Alfred University where I was the victim of anti-Semitism 1958 to '62. Discriminating fraternities, fistfights, insults, and I played Shylock in the “Merchant of Venice.” An act of no small act of courage. I wrote a routine about that. It’s actually true. I mean, obviously the thing is a fantasy, a nightmare. But I go, “Hath not a Jew eyes,” and have this palsy shake 'cause I was only 19 and I had to see. Has not a Jew hands, organs, tenses, dimensions, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?“ And they went, "No! Jew boy, Jew boy!” And they stormed the stage with dogs and everything, they ran all over the campus, finally got shelter in the ethics professor’s house after questioning. The idea is that I like being visible that way.
Well, I think we’ve stopped there. American Jewish humour shaped the humour of America. Its origins in Eastern Europe and the immigrant experience, and even the Bible has a role to play as suggested in the film by the writer, Leo Rosten, and we have an excerpt coming up.
There’s a Jewish joke for almost every aspect of human behaviour or human conflict. There are no puns in Jewish humour. There isn’t much word play even though words are so important. There aren’t many jokes about sex because the Jews tend to be prudish. There are very few jokes exalting physical prowess. Quite the contrary, you’re always outwitting the bully. The whole tradition is of that. And then there are just jokes about people and jokes about God for heaven’s sake. The Jewish attitude to God mystifies many people and when I was a child, it mystified me. There’s a story of Moses leading the children of Israel and he comes to the Red Sea and he says, “Manny, the boats.” Manny is the press agent. Manny says, “What boats?” He said, “My God, Manny, did you forget to provide the boats to get across the sea here?” “Oh, Moses, I’m so sorry, I forgot.” “You forgot? Oh my God, what do you expect me to do? Do you expect me to part the waters and have the Jews go across, and then have the waters come back and drown the pursuing Egyptians? Is that what you expect?” Manny said, “Boss, you do that and I’ll get you two pages in the Old Testament.”
Still makes me laugh. In 1995, I returned to the subject of the Holocaust now as an independent producer for the 60 minute film called “Liberation.” Part of a season on Channel 4 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second World War. By 1945, American, British, and Russian forces had entered and liberated the concentration camps. Amongst the service men and women I interviewed who first entered these places was a former American GI who’d never spoken publicly before. It’s a graphic account of that experience. And though after we’d finished film, he wanted it to be broadcast, I must warn you of his profound distress.
All these people seem to have been shot in the head. I don’t know, 60, 70, maybe 80, I don’t know. You know, you don’t count. And it was a mess. And then as we kept going, we hit these lime pits. They were like holes with people bodies thrown in them and they had like this white lime thrown on them. Then we saw against this other building that was like cords of wood that people were stacked. It made you mad. These people didn’t have a chance. I mean, they was sick to start with. You could see was bones and skulls and eyes ready to pop out, and they were shot in the head, behind the head and the front in the temple. It kind of galls you, you like, I’ve seen a lot of guys cry. Once in a while, I’d have a dream about it. My wife she’s just telling me I had nightmares. She said I used to curse in my dreams, and I would never tell her just what it was. And we went back into the camp and we took over the burial details, and our job was we took over the towers, then we had the generals come in. We had Ike, had General Patton, he was our division Army leader. Our general Finley and Bradley were there, right? I think if you put 10 or 15 of those bodies together, what I saw, if you got 150 pounds out of them you got a lot because they were just bones and all. I seen when they were trying to pick them up to bury them that they just fall apart. They just fall apart. Sorry I broke down like that.
Well. “Liberation” was a film for a general television audience, but how do you teach such a subject to children? In 1997, Robert Wistrich and I agreed to write and produce a 60 minute video structured in 10 parts, as well as a continuous version as part of an educational pack for secondary schools here in the UK called, “Lessons of the Holocaust.” This initiative was under the aegis of none other than Trudy Gold, then director of the London Jewish Cultural Centre. This video was to accompany texts, illustrations, posters, research materials for teachers that Trudy supervised. Her wonderful enthusiasm and commitment made sure this project happened. In this case, I decided only to use archive film footage taken from Allied and German news reels, Nazi propaganda films, and other documentaries, which included some dramatic reconstruction as well as still photographs. I did the commentary, and here is an example from part three, the roots of Nazi antisemitism.
[Narrator] By 1938, Hitler was energetically building up the German military machine. The whole country had been transformed into one giant marching column. Hitler succeeded in binding an entire generation of German youth to the cause of national socialism. But the fuhrer’s dreams of expansion could not be achieved without the union of all people of German blood in one great Reich. The time was now ripe for the invasion of Austria, Hitler’s homeland, in March, 1938. Most Austrians were ecstatic. An order of violence against Jews followed almost immediately. In Vienna, Jews were publicly humiliated, made to scrub the pavements in front of jeering spectators and former neighbours. A violent and brutal campaign of intimidation forced thousands of Jews to leave Austria. The man put in charge of these expulsions was Adolph Eichmann. Later to be very closely involved in the mass murder of Jews in all Nazi occupied Europe.
There’s been much discussion about the quality of Holocaust education. There’ve been reports suggesting that here in the UK for instance, teaching the subject suffers from a lack of coherence, proper teacher awareness. They need to be more effective in how it’s taught. I hope that’s changed or is changing. It’s important that the teaching of the Holocaust continues to be part of the curriculum in as many countries as possible. The revelations of the concentration camps were of course a huge factor in the growth of international human rights. Those of you who saw my recent presentation on human rights might recall the BBC series, “Prisoners Of Conscience.” Five minute appeals on behalf of innocent men, women, and children, and the following series, “Human Rights, Human Wrongs,” highlighting abuses around the world. Broadcast every December for 11 years with one exception. 1998 was the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, and I contributed to a special . Season with 10 programmes called “Urgent Action.” These featured people from a number of different countries whose lives were under immediate and serious threat including torture. I showed two of these programmes, women living under the rule of the Taliban, and the plight of the Uyghurs in China as part of my recent lecture. And I’d like to show another, so here in the context of this particular talk, is the urgent action film that concerned Israel.
[Narrator] There is no doubt that Abd al-Rahman Ghanimat is a murderer. He has admitted to being a member of the radical Islamic group Hamas, and taking part in the shootings of Israeli soldiers and settlers and the bombing in Jerusalem. For this, he has received five life sentences. There can never be any excuse for such crimes. But nor can there be any excuse for torture, and Ghanimat was severely and repeatedly tortured by the Israeli security forces for a total of 110 days. Torture is routine in the interrogation of Palestinian suspects in Israel.
It is used in this degree or another in each and every interrogation. It’s very clear. There’s no one Palestinian who entered interrogation and didn’t have some kind of the varieties of the permitted tortures. All the Israelis know that Palestinians are being tortured.
[Narrator] Abd al-Rahman Ghanimat is 26. He was arrested in June, 1997 by the Palestinians, who it is believed handed him over to the Israelis who began their interrogation. He was held in what is called the Shabeh, deprived of sleep for days while deafening music was played continuously in his ears. Here is Abd al-Rahman’s uncle, Omar, who himself was arrested and tortured for 47 days. He describes the Shabeh.
[Translator] Shabeh means using a small chair like this 25 centimetre high with one leg broken of so that it is at an angle and very uncomfortable. You are told to sit down with a hood over your head and your hands tied like this with handcuffs so that you keep falling over, and this cause pain in the back and shoulders.
[Narrator] An appeal was made on behalf of Abd al-Rahman Ghanimat for the physical pressure to stop. The Israeli high court, by five votes to four, turned down an application to stop the torture. The interrogations and torture continued. In 1987, the Israeli government appointed a commission under Judge Landau to advise on methods of interrogation. He ruled that moderate physical pressure, as he called it, was permissible in the war against terrorism. This includes the Shabeh used on the Ghanimats, shackling in different positions, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, and shaking. These methods were scientifically designed to cause pain but leave no marks, and they’re carefully monitored. They’re in total breach of the UN Convention Against Torture, which Israel itself ratified in 1991. It is estimated that the Israeli security forces torture nearly 1,000 people every year. Since 1988, at least 10 have died. When his lawyer saw him recently in jail, she found that Ghanimat had not spoken to anyone for a month. If the security forces believe that he has still more information, they will torture him again.
You can always find thousand excuses why you should kill those who break the law, why you should torture them, why you should hang them, et cetera. The human community have turned this torture to an illegal act correctly so. And I think no matter what under any circumstances, the authorities should not use torture.
As far as I’m aware, Abd al-Rahman Ghanimat remains in prison. In 1999, moderate physical pressure was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court, as well as many of the practises shown in the film due I suspect to continuous protest from within and outside Israel. But I’m also informed that torture persists in Israel as it does in many countries, and I still suspect a culture of denial prevails amongst mainstream Israeli opinion on the subject. Would then I were wrong, especially in the light of recent atrocities where anger and bitterness enormously increase the pressure to violate human rights conventions. In 2005 came my last exploration of the Holocaust, “KZ.” A feature length documentary film for cinema and television. “KZ” is set in the memorial site of Mauthausen, the largest concentration camp in Austria. This idea emerged whilst making my 1995 documentary “Liberation,” an excerpt of which I showed earlier. During filming, I noticed the tourists, children playing, sightseers, tour guides leading groups of school children and parties of old people, older people. I watch as they walk through the concrete buildings where the SS administered the camp, the inmate blocks that housed prisoners from all over Europe, the gas chamber and crematorium. What did they think? What did they feel? What were their questions? A decade later, an opportunity arose to return to Mauthausen to make a film that I felt should be radically different in its approach.
No commentary, no music, no reconstructions with actors, no historians, no black and white footage of the liberation of the camp, no piles of corpses. All had been seen. It was the tourists, the groups of students, the guides, Mauthausen was going about their daily lives in the nearby town. Mauthauseners who were young at the time, and those had become Mauthauseners by deciding to remove or to move to the area. And so I filmed for several weeks, but surely I needed the testimony of survivors. So I filmed a number of their remarkable and tragic testimonies. But during the final editing process, I felt even their special experience took the story away from us, the audience. So “KZ” is amongst the first 21st century documentaries on the Holocaust without survivors, and as such, it presages the future. “KZ” is a film about the interface between now and then. What do the meanings of the camp experience convey to us who were never there? How possible is it for our imagination to grasp the enormity of the crimes committed? Why should we even care when we have our own contemporary genocides and wars? “KZ” is a film that is set in the landscape of a concentration camp, but I believe it’s a film about today. What will we remember? In this final excerpt, the first words you will hear are from the official audio guide. And thank you for watching, and apologies for those interruptions.
[Narrator] You have come here and that is good. Regardless of the reason you may ever have had to come, this gives us the opportunity to talk to you and to supply you with correct information which you may not get elsewhere. There is no need to grasp the full extent of the tragedy which took place here. There is a safety device inside you which will protect you, and that is a good thing. Otherwise, there would be the danger that one might lose one’s mind. But we want you to return home safely with a sound mind, and to use it later on for the cause of freedom, justice, and truth.
First of all, I would like to welcome you here, the memorial of the former concentration camp, Mauthausen. I want to do first a small introduction into the subject or topic concentration camp, okay? As the name, it’s clear, concentration. Okay, here what was concentrated humans. Which humans? They called them at the start the inner enemy. Afterwards, . Do you understand that word? Parasites, okay, the subhumans, the . Okay, the Nazis called the people like that. Asocial. You know this term? It’s still used to nowadays for to insult people. Simply, everybody’s asocial who doesn’t fit in the norm. Alcoholics, prostitute, workless, homeless, et cetera. Okay, they put them in trains, in waggons for animals or for goods, and they transport them hundreds kilometres across Europe. One third didn’t survive this transport. Thousands of people arrived here already dead. So the last period of the camp, many, many people come to here. No food, overcrowded, chaos, and mass dying. People that died like flies at the end. That’s why the half of the people who died here died only in the year '45 in the last months of the war.
[Student] Where is the train station?
The train station was in the town or is in the town. It’s still there.
[Student] It’s down.
Yes, it’s six kilometres from here.
[Student] And did they have to walk from?
They had to run. The first two and a half years was dominated by building up the camp. The stairs of death, I hope you will see it afterwards. I don’t know if you go down afterwards. It’s not within the tour. People estimate about around 1 million stones were carried up the death stairs to build the camp. So every stone you see here is connected with this. It looked like that. Many people in columns always in a line of five people, in rows of five people had to run up with the stone on the back up to 50 kilos. You had to do that 15 times per day. It was nothing else then a death sentence. It is the symbol of Mauthausen is this stair. So now I would like to go some stations in the life of a prisoner in the concentration camp. We start at the admittance in the camp at the .
Thank you. I’m sorry, I seem to have with these delays go on rather long. My apologies, and thank you Lauren, for your help in keeping it going. If there’s a moment or so for any questions, happy to take them.
Q&A and Comments:
Q - [Lauren] Yeah, we have a few questions. The first one is where can we watch your film?
A - Yeah. It’s not easy. Some are owned by television companies. The few that I have have been seen in festivals and screenings, and it may be possible to make them available as Wendy and Trudy was saying earlier to Lockdown audience for those who might be interested. So perhaps we can do that with several of them. For instance, like “KZ.” Any other question?
Q - [Lauren] Yes. “Jews outside of the Christian and Muslim world never encountered anti-Jewish feeling. Why?”
Sorry, could you say that again?
[Lauren] Yeah, it says, “Jews outside of the Christian and Muslim world never encountered anti-Jewish feelings. Why?”
A - Why did Jews outside of the… I don’t understand the question. Sorry.
[Lauren] I don’t really either. We can move on.
Just repeat that, Lauren. Sorry, Jews and Christians. Listen to this question, Trudy. Listen to this. Sorry, I’m just here. I’m here with Trudy and with Jeremy Rabbi Rosen. What is the question? Why?
[Lauren] It says, “Jews outside of the Christian and Muslim world never encountered anti-Jewish feelings. Why?”
You’re talking about you mean in China? Maybe Jews in China and India.
The Jews outside the world of Christianity and Islam. Is that the question?
Yes, that’s the question.
Sounds like it.
The question would take at least three hours to answer.
Okay.
But we will answer.
Okay, that’s going to be a presentation, so thank you for giving us a question. We will address it, but not today.
It’s an important question.
It’s an important question. Trudy says it’s an important question, but not today.
[Jeremy] Very simple answer, look at their theology.
Look at what?
[Jeremy] Look at their theology.
Look at their theology.
Jeremy says look at their theology.
Sorry, Rex. Over to you.
Thank you for trying to answer.
Next one. Thanks.
Q - [Lauren] The next question, “The guy did not say the victims at Mauthausen were mainly Jews. Did he eventually get around to that? They weren’t mentioned.”
A - They weren’t mainly Jews. Jews were a very large part of the population, but so were Russian prisoners of war. In fact, there were prisoners of literally from all over Europe. But the Jewish part, I mean, thousands and thousands Jews of course, but they weren’t the largest minority. They basically they were singled out, of course, just like, you know, Russian prisoners of war. But they were part of this sort of mass of prisoners that were coming to Mauthausen.
Q - [Lauren] Thank you. The next question is, “Did you ever meet Claude Lanzmann? What are your thoughts about his approach to making his film "Shoah,” and its impact?“
A - Very interesting question. I met Lanzmann once briefly, and I do have a story about him, which I could tell if we have a little time. I thought, I think "Shoah” is a brilliant work, a work of most remarkable quality. I mean, he took, almost to an extreme, the long shot, and using the camera as observer. It’s controversial in some aspects. I think it’s a brilliant evocation of a number of things, and of course he shot so much stuff and several other films have been made. But I’m an admirer. Though he was I think an extraordinary egocentric, ferociously concentrated. I was doing my film “Auschwitz and the Allies,” and I spoke to, I wanted to interview one guy who, you know, I thought was important, but he said, “Look, I can’t do it. A French guy called Lanzmann has committed me to him, and he doesn’t want me to do anything else. I said, "Well, I’ll ring this chap.” I rang Lanzmann and Lanzmann listened and said, “Look, forget your film. I’m making a masterpiece.” So Lanzmann, of course, I made my film, but Lanzmann’s egocentricity and extraordinary concentration obviously worked, you know, for him to make the films he did. But an interesting example of that ferocious determination. Thank you for the question.
Q - [Lauren] Someone is asking, “Are your films at the National Film and Television School?”
A - I think a couple are. Yeah, I think so, and some of them are at the British Film Institute, and they’re in a few other libraries. Yes.
Q - [Lauren] And one last question, “Why should torture not be used against people who can provide information that might save innocent lives?”
A - Ah, there’s a classic question, isn’t it? Well, frankly, torture should never be used. It’s banned internationally. There’s prohibitions against it. It doesn’t really provide information. People will say anything under duress, and it’s a weapon of terror and intimidation, and frankly, it’s intolerable. And of course it’s still in our world, it’s no way to get information however desperate the circumstances, and it’s, you know, something we should all be very wary of. We’re seeing it now, I’m sure in Ukraine, and we’ll hear evidence of it that people, you know, in particularly police or military units, if they have the opportunity, some of them will do terrible things to do precisely what you’ve just asked to get information. But they’re not getting information, they’re terrorising you. It’s something we should never accept.
[Lauren] Well, I believe those are all the questions. So thank you so much, Rex. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Rex, for that really fascinating presentation. Honestly, so distressing.
Yeah.
Not an easy subject. Thank you, thank you very, very much. See you soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.
[Rex] Bye-bye.