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Auschwitz: The Surprising Hidden Truth (2012)
A thorough examination
This documentary uses 3-D models, eyewitness testimony, satellite photos and blueprints to show that the commonly-told story of Auschwitz isn't believable.
Escape from Sobibor (1987)
Hollywood Storytelling at its Best
If you're expecting exciting and imaginative Hollywood storytelling this movie has all that and way more. But after seeing this movie you really should watch One Third of the Holocaust (2008).
Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Propaganda intended for America
"Mrs. Miniver" was intended to increase American support for the war. As the BBC tells us today even Goebbels was impressed. That said, an obvious example of what is known as atrocity propaganda was presented in the film as fact and should be addressed. The downed German flyer (played by anti-Nazi Austrian émigré Helmut Dantine) boasts of killing "30,000 in two hours" in the bombing of Rotterdam. In reality this was what Churchill claimed - and not something any downed German airman would likely boast about had it actually happened.. The actual toll is estimated to be 1,000 killed due mostly to fire that spread out of control. It's also notable that Goebbels, who was impressed by the film and supposedly "feared" its effects (if the BBC is correct)- gets criticized today for his promotion of "total war" which he indeed made a very famous speech about. The last scene in the film has the townspeople assembled in their bombed-out church and their vicar delivers a "sermon" that is all about how this is no ordinary war. He asks rhetorically why "children, old people, a young girl at the height of her loveliness" have been "sacrificed" in the war. His answer is that "this is a war of the people, of all the people and it must be fought not only on the battlefield but in the cities and in the villages and on the farms, in the home, and in the heart of every man, woman and child who loves freedom."
"Mrs. Miniver", released in the US just a few days after the British had made the first "1,000-bomber raid" on a German city promoted "total war" to British - and American- audiences half a year before Goebbels promoted that same mindset to the German people.
One Third of the Holocaust (2008)
Well-researched revision of history
This focuses on three camps - Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka - where nearly one-third of the whole Holocaust is alleged to have happened. The strongest part of this documentary is the extensive consultation of the works of major Holocaust historians and institutions as well as the transcript of the Nuremberg Trial. The story is then meticulously examined and challenged using math, science, biology and logic.
The Rose Garden (1989)
Does it matter whether the story is even true?
"The Rose Garden" is based on a crime allegedly committed near the end of World War II. If you look up "Bullenhuser Damm" you'll likely find several places on the internet where the story is told with varying details and characters. This story is also mentioned by the American prosecutor played by Richard Widmark in the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg".
The basic story is that in the last days of the war a group of Jewish children who had allegedly been used in medical experiments were murdered along with a number of adult prisoners in the basement of a school in Hamburg. These secret killings were carried out we are told because the Nazis wanted to hide the evidence of experimentation on prisoners and therefore could not allow these prisoners to be discovered by the Allies.
So according to the story the children and the adults to be disposed of were brought by truck from a camp about ten miles away to the Bullenhuser Damm school to be killed.
I've known about this story for about 20 years and in that time come across several versions on the internet. I haven't yet found a version that tells what happened after the killings - that is, what was done with the bodies.
Before posting this I checked the "Children of Bullenhuser Damm association" website and while it tells us what happened after the war regarding prosecution of the accused perpetrators nothing is mentioned or explained about the disposal of the bodies of the victims. I've also tried to find a transcript of the court proceedings of the original trial in 1946. One might exist as it is mentioned on the association's website that in 1986 "extracts from the transcript of proceedings of the "Curio-Haus trials" were read out...". But that's all we're told and without the transcript of the trial this story simply is not believable.
According to the story the victims were killed (and presumably disposed of), the perpetrators left the scene of the crime and the war ended. So there were no witnesses left behind and no evidence that a crime had even occurred.
The first question should be: How was this crime discovered?
One of the versions of this story tells us the killing of the children happened this way:
"The children were told that they had to be vaccinated against typhoid fever before their return journey. Then they were injected with morphine. They were hanged from hooks on the wall, but the SS men found it difficult to kill the mutilated children. The first child to be strung up was so light - due to disease and malnutrition - that the rope wouldn't strangle him. SS untersturmführer Frahm had to use all of his own weight to tighten the noose. Then he hanged the others, two at a time, from different hooks. 'Just like pictures on the wall', he would recall later. He added that none of the children had cried.
At five o' clock in the morning on April 21st, 1945, the Nazis had finished with their work and drank hard-earned coffee ..."
This sounds monstrous, doesn't it. It would also be at least somewhat more believable if a full and credible transcript of the trial could be found which explained the problematic details of the story . And the very first question were satisfactorily answered.
The second question would be: Why did the Germans bother to go to all this trouble?
Rather than transporting all these victims miles away from what we are told was a "death" camp, why didn't they just gas or shoot them right there in the camp and dispose of them - the evidence, that is- in the camp's crematory ovens?
The camp at which the prisoners had been held - Neuengamme - has been described this way: "Thousands of inmates were hanged, shot, gassed, killed by lethal injection or transferred to (other) death camps". In view of this description why did the Germans need to transport these victims to a special location instead of just dumping them onto the alleged conveyor belt of death that we are told Germany had been remorselessly operating for 12 years?
If these questions - after 75 years - still have not been answered then why was this movie made? And why is this story still being told to school children in Germany today? Doesn't it matter whether the story is even true?
I would add that anyone with questions about this story or others like it see the documentary One Third of the Holocaust (2008)