The Odessa File (1974)

Jon Voight: Peter Miller

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Peter Miller : Do you remember a man with the name of Tauber?

  Eduard Roschmann : Who?

  Peter Miller : Salomon Tauber. He was German and Jewish. One of your prisoners at Riga. Try to think, Roschmann.

  Eduard Roschmann : I can't remember all the prisoners' names.

  Peter Miller : He died in Hamburg last November. He gassed himself. Are you listening?

  Eduard Roschmann : If I must.

  Peter Miller : Yes, you must.

  Eduard Roschmann : All right, I'm listening.

  Peter Miller : He left behind a diary.

  Eduard Roschmann : Is that why you came? Because of the diary of some old Jew? A dead man's diary is no evidence.

  Peter Miller : There was a date in the diary I want to remind you of. Something that happened at Riga docks... on October 11,1944.

  Eduard Roschmann : So what? The man struck me. He disobeyed my orders. I had the right to commandeer that ship.

  Peter Miller : Was that the man you killed?

  Eduard Roschmann : How should I know? It was 20 years ago.

  Peter Miller : Was that the man?

  Eduard Roschmann : All right! So that was the man. So what?

  Peter Miller : That was my father!

  Eduard Roschmann : Your father. So you didn't come about the Jews at all. I understand.

  Peter Miller : No, you don't understand! What you and your kind did to all those people sickened the whole of mankind. But I'm here for my father.

  Eduard Roschmann : How could you possibly know from that diary that man was your father?

  Peter Miller : October 11, the same date, the same place. The Knights Cross with the oak leaf cluster, the highest award for bravery in the field. Given to very few of the rank of captain. The same rank, the same decoration, the same man!

  Eduard Roschmann : I don't even remember. You're not going to kill me. You can't. You called me a butcher. Wouldn't killing me make you a butcher, too? What's the difference?

• Peter Miller : [Peter Miller's first lines; he pulls to the curb after hearing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the radio]  Events that can change history sometimes hang on tiny chances. If I hadn't pulled to the curb, I wouldn't have caught the traffic light, nor seen the ambulance, never have heard of Salomon Tauber or Eduard Roschmann. Nor got involved with the agents of Israel, or with the sinister and deadly men behind the Odessa. That night I was just a reporter with a nose for a possible story.

• [Miller is trying to sell his editor a story based on the diary] 

  Hoffmann : No one wants to read about Jews.

  Peter Miller : They were GERMANS!

  Hoffmann : They were German Jews.

• Peter Miller : [in disgust, to Roschmann]  You are not even worth a bullet!

• Peter Miller : War criminals are a police matter, but the police don't want to do anything about it, so I'm going to.