黄星

Simon Wiesenthal introduces this feature-length documentary and quotes Adolf Eichmann on the killing of Jews: “One hundred dead are a catastrophe; a million dead are a statistic.” This film, made by camp survivor Dieter Hildebrandt, received an Oscar nomination in 1980. It traces the history of anti-Semitism in Germany, beginning with Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and ending with the concentration camps. Along the way we see Himmler announce at a book-burning that “the age of Jewish intellectualism” is over, and Nazi propaganda material comparing Jews to rats and to weeds, both of which need to be eradicated. The film’s focus on Nazi anti-semitism gives it the focus to contain its subject within the bounds of a feature-length documentary, though it doesn’t discuss the fact that anti-semitism was widespread throughout Western European culture and wasn’t simply something fomented by Hitler and the Nazis.