Ann-Mari Hillman - The E-Lion Collection - Innovative Teaching and Learning, RVCC

The E-Lion Collection: Showcasing the Work of the E-Student

Ann-Mari Hillman
Film Paper The Persecution of the Jewish People Films: Au Revoir Les Enfants Europa! Europa!	The Holocaust in Nazi-Germany did not occur in a vacuum as an isolated event; a freak of history. Jews have been persecuted for hundreds of years and feelings of anti-Semitism have been harbored by many people in different countries resulting in their removal and killing. Jews had always belonged to a low class community in Christian Europe and they were permitted to live and work within the Christian community because they were needed by the aristocracy to deal with the "unclean" task of money handling. But they were always kept apart and were not allowed to assimilate completely into the society they lived in. When they became too powerful for the taste of the Christian community, they were quickly brought under control, either by removal from the country and having their possessions confiscated or they were put under strict control by regulations. An example of the latter was Florence's regulations of the Jewish community of 1463 (Reader 293). In Spain they were simply thrown out of the country together with the Muslim Moors (Reader 74). Up to the start of European colonization in the 15th century, the Jews had been classified as a separate ethno-religious community with low status. At the time of colonization and when the Catholic Church became strong, the attitude shifted and Jews were considered to be a separate race instead of only a separate religious community. As Rita Botwinick states in her book "A Holocaust Reader", it is important to remember the history of mistrust of the Jewish people before the Holocaust, to be able to understand the general acceptance by the German people of the restrictions and killings that were imposed on the Jews during Hitler's regime. She introduces her book in the following way: "The Holocaust stands as the culmination of man's capacity for inhumanity. The presence of deep-rooted prejudice toward the Jews was the starting point for this disaster. Nazi propaganda, no matter how cleverly persuasive, would not have succeeded without a bedrock of long-established hatred" (Botwinick 1). And this feeling of the internal other in the 20th century Europe is eloquently illustrated in the movies: Au Revoir Les Enfants and Europa! Europa! "Au Revoir Les Enfants" is a movie that is based on the French director Lois Malle's childhood experiences in a Catholic boarding school during the German occupation of France. The monks who are running the school try to hide the identification of some Jewish pupils and one boy (representing Malle) befriends one of these students. The boy eventually realizes that he is Jewish and he is bewildered as to why Jews are persecuted by the Germans. There are some scenes in the movie that show how deep-seated feelings by European Christians of seeing Jews as an inferior race and someone you don't want to be linked hereditary at all. One is a scene where the boy's mother comes to visit the school and the boy asks her a question about their ancestry. He thinks that some relatives in Switzerland are Jewish. The Boy: "Aren't we Jewish, mother?" The Mother (with an astonished, disbelieving expression on her face): "Absolutely not. They [the relatives] are devout Catholics and would be horrified if they heard you asking this question." Her reaction could be likened to a white southerner in America whose child just asked if they have any black ancestry. She is a good woman but she seems to get upset for the wrong reasons. The mother and her sons, plus the Jewish boy, go to a fancy restaurant to have lunch. While flirting with some German soldiers, she becomes upset when an old Jewish man, who has frequented the same restaurant for decades, is asked to leave by French Milice [volunteer fascist corps (reader 394)]. Her comment is not that it is horrible that they are throwing him out because he is Jewish, but because he looks like a very distinguished man who should be allowed to finish his meal in peace. Another example in the movie of these kinds of old standing negative sentiments of Jews is played out in a scene where the boy is trading jam for stamps and he bargains for more stamps and the other boy reacts by saying: "You're a real Jew". Later in the movie the boy asks his older brother what a Jew is and the following conversation ensues: The older brother: "A Jew is someone who doesn't eat pork". The boy: "You're kidding me? But what are they guilty of?", The brother: "Being smarter than us and killing Jesus". In the movie "Europa! Europa!, the description of a Jew is a quite different and it also shows the problem of recognizing the "internal other" in the case of infiltration into the ruling community by the same. All of Hitler's rhetoric about being able to recognize a Jew by his looks, attitude or smell falls apart in this case. As with "Au Revoir Les Enfants", Europa! Europa! deals with a movie directors child hood experiences (Salomen Perel), but this time it's not from a Christian boy's perspective but from a Jewish boy's struggle to survive the war anyway he can, even if it means to pretend that he is a "pure" German or a Bolshevik. There is a scene in this movie where the boy (representing Perel) has convinced the Germans that he is a true German and after some extraordinary lucky occurrences in the war in Russia makes him into a war hero, he is sent to a school in Germany to become educated in the Fuhrer's plan. A professor is teaching the subject, "How to recognize a Jew". He goes into lengthy stereotypical description of what Jews look like. There is a mention of a hooked nose, a shuffling gait and a head that protrudes in the back head. He proceeds to bring out a ruler and a skull measurer and uses Perel as his example. He measures his nose and head carefully and the worry in Perel's face is obvious, they will surely discover his deceit now. But the professor tells the class that this is a good specimen of the Aryan race, not an excellent one because of his dark hair, but good anyway. It's interesting to see how phrenology and craniology is used in this way, since the Jews mostly belong to the white race and this pseudo science was developed to prove the superiority of the white race over the black and yellow race (Reader 198). The professor states after his lecture, just as the scientists of the 19th century had claimed, that science is objective and precise; it does not lie. Propaganda and indoctrination, together with the control of the military, are effective tools to control people and make them into mindless believers in the ruling authority. Many dictators besides Hitler have used these methods. Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung come to mind. Hitler writes in "Mein Kampf regarding the use of propaganda: "The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain fact, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision". (Botwinick 107). Hitler's aim was to direct the masses to believe that, and I quote Wilhelm Marr, another anti-Semite who lived in the 19th century, "Jews are not only an alien race, they constitute an international conspiracy whose aim is the domination of Germany, Europe, indeed, the whole world" (Reader 312). To best succeed in getting the desired results of the propaganda is to target the most vulnerable and impressionable section of the society; the children. The movie "Europa! Europa! highlights this indoctrination of the young by showing it from two different viewpoints, Hitler's and Stalin's. When Jupp's parents send him and his brother to Russia for protection, he is separated and ends up in a Russian Bolshevik orphanage. The children are drilled in Stalin's view of communism, which entails total obedience to him, and a sacrifice of individuality for service for the good of the state. One of the scenes shows one of the tricks they use to brainwash the children. During one lecture, the leaders talk about the non-existence of God. Suddenly, one boy exclaims that there is a God and to prove his point, he is asked to pray to God for candy to rain down from heaven. He does what he is told and, of course, no candy materializes. But then the leader asks the kids to pray to Lenin for the same thing and suddenly candy is raining down from the ceiling. The older children realize that someone is throwing candy from a vent in the ceiling, but the effect on the younger kids must be powerful. Later in the movie, when he switches sides and is taken under the wings of an SS officer, he is told about the plans to remove the Jews to create "Lebensraum", living space for the Aryan race. He is not told about plans to kill them all, but he is told that he has to "learn to hate". Once at the school, he has to swear total allegiance to Hitler, and is taught a Jewish hate song that they sing while doing their drills. Another example of the effectiveness of Hitler's propaganda is demonstrated in the movie by the girlfriend of Jupp who becomes pregnant by a Hitler Jugend boy just because he is fulfilling the requirements for a perfect Aryan specimen. Hitler encouraged such encounters between, in his view, perfect Germans. His plan of creating a "pure" Aryan race resulted in special "breeding" houses where carefully selected women and girls were sent to "breed" with men who fulfilled the same physical characteristics, often SS men (Posting 953 by Instructor). It was also a common practice to turn the children against their parents and encourage them to spy and report incidents that seemed to contradict Hitler's agenda. When Leni's mother tells Jupp about the pregnancy, she exclaims with exasperation: "I don't know my daughter any more. Children are not the same these days". Both of the movies that I have quoted from, take place outside of the concentration camps and the horrible atrocities that occurred in these places are absent from the screen. But I think they put you in the frame of mind of what went on in people's daily lives during these war years, both in Germany and in German occupied countries. People were trying to make sense of it all and they tried to survive any way they could. Many ordinary citizens became heroes in their efforts to try and help the persecuted people and many lost their lives because of it. The monks in the Catholic French school in "Au Revoir Les Enfants", the mother of Leni in the movie "Europa! Europa! who finds out Jupp is Jewish but vows not to tell, as does the German soldier who befriends Jupp and also discovers that he is Jewish but tells him that "all Germans are not the same", all are examples of people who refused to accept Hitler's scheme. But there were also many people who accepted the situation or didn't want to know the true extent of what was going on. And many yet, agreed with Hitler's policies and did not hesitate to help him achieve his insane goal. I think the end of Europa! Europa! very effectively demonstrates this point. The war is over and Jupp is captured by the Russians. He tries to explain that he is Jewish and that he only pretended to be a German soldier to survive. The Russian soldier shows him the passing rows of emancipated concentration camp survivors and tells him that these are Jews, he cannot possible be one of them since he is not suffering any ill-effects from the war. Jupp looks at them and says: "But I didn't know. I didn't know". The Russian soldier turns to the other soldier and says with contempt in his voice: "Another one that didn't know".

Ann-Mari Hillman

Film Paper The Persecution of the Jewish People

Films:

Au Revoir Les Enfants
Europa! Europa!

The Holocaust in Nazi-Germany did not occur in a vacuum as an isolated event; a freak of history. Jews have been persecuted for hundreds of years and feelings of anti-Semitism have been harbored by many people in different countries resulting in their removal and killing. Jews had always belonged to a low class community in Christian Europe and they were permitted to live and work within the Christian community because they were needed by the aristocracy to deal with the "unclean" task of money handling. But they were always kept apart and were not allowed to assimilate completely into the society they lived in. When they became too powerful for the taste of the Christian community, they were quickly brought under control, either by removal from the country and having their possessions confiscated or they were put under strict control by regulations. An example of the latter was Florence's regulations of the Jewish community of 1463 (Reader 293). In Spain they were simply thrown out of the country together with the Muslim Moors (Reader 74). Up to the start of European colonization in the 15th century, the Jews had been classified as a separate ethno-religious community with low status. At the time of colonization and when the Catholic Church became strong, the attitude shifted and Jews were considered to be a separate race instead of only a separate religious community.

As Rita Botwinick states in her book "A Holocaust Reader", it is important to remember the history of mistrust of the Jewish people before the Holocaust, to be able to understand the general acceptance by the German people of the restrictions and killings that were imposed on the Jews during Hitler's regime. She introduces her book in the following way: "The Holocaust stands as the culmination of man's capacity for inhumanity. The presence of deep-rooted prejudice toward the Jews was the starting point for this disaster. Nazi propaganda, no matter how cleverly persuasive, would not have succeeded without a bedrock of long-established hatred" (Botwinick 1). And this feeling of the internal other in the 20th century Europe is eloquently illustrated in the movies: Au Revoir Les Enfants and Europa! Europa!

"Au Revoir Les Enfants" is a movie that is based on the French director Lois Malle's childhood experiences in a Catholic boarding school during the German occupation of France. The monks who are running the school try to hide the identification of some Jewish pupils and one boy (representing Malle) befriends one of these students. The boy eventually realizes that he is Jewish and he is bewildered as to why Jews are persecuted by the Germans. There are some scenes in the movie that show how deep-seated feelings by European Christians of seeing Jews as an inferior race and someone you don't want to be linked hereditary at all. One is a scene where the boy's mother comes to visit the school and the boy asks her a question about their ancestry. He thinks that some relatives in Switzerland are Jewish. The Boy: "Aren't we Jewish, mother?" The Mother (with an astonished, disbelieving expression on her face): "Absolutely not. They [the relatives] are devout Catholics and would be horrified if they heard you asking this question." Her reaction could be likened to a white southerner in America whose child just asked if they have any black ancestry. She is a good woman but she seems to get upset for the wrong reasons. The mother and her sons, plus the Jewish boy, go to a fancy restaurant to have lunch. While flirting with some German soldiers, she becomes upset when an old Jewish man, who has frequented the same restaurant for decades, is asked to leave by French Milice [volunteer fascist corps (reader 394)]. Her comment is not that it is horrible that they are throwing him out because he is Jewish, but because he looks like a very distinguished man who should be allowed to finish his meal in peace. Another example in the movie of these kinds of old standing negative sentiments of Jews is played out in a scene where the boy is trading jam for stamps and he bargains for more stamps and the other boy reacts by saying: "You're a real Jew". Later in the movie the boy asks his older brother what a Jew is and the following conversation ensues: The older brother: "A Jew is someone who doesn't eat pork". The boy: "You're kidding me? But what are they guilty of?", The brother: "Being smarter than us and killing Jesus".

In the movie "Europa! Europa!, the description of a Jew is a quite different and it also shows the problem of recognizing the "internal other" in the case of infiltration into the ruling community by the same. All of Hitler's rhetoric about being able to recognize a Jew by his looks, attitude or smell falls apart in this case. As with "Au Revoir Les Enfants", Europa! Europa! deals with a movie directors child hood experiences (Salomen Perel), but this time it's not from a Christian boy's perspective but from a Jewish boy's struggle to survive the war anyway he can, even if it means to pretend that he is a "pure" German or a Bolshevik. There is a scene in this movie where the boy (representing Perel) has convinced the Germans that he is a true German and after some extraordinary lucky occurrences in the war in Russia makes him into a war hero, he is sent to a school in Germany to become educated in the Fuhrer's plan. A professor is teaching the subject, "How to recognize a Jew". He goes into lengthy stereotypical description of what Jews look like. There is a mention of a hooked nose, a shuffling gait and a head that protrudes in the back head. He proceeds to bring out a ruler and a skull measurer and uses Perel as his example. He measures his nose and head carefully and the worry in Perel's face is obvious, they will surely discover his deceit now. But the professor tells the class that this is a good specimen of the Aryan race, not an excellent one because of his dark hair, but good anyway. It's interesting to see how phrenology and craniology is used in this way, since the Jews mostly belong to the white race and this pseudo science was developed to prove the superiority of the white race over the black and yellow race (Reader 198). The professor states after his lecture, just as the scientists of the 19th century had claimed, that science is objective and precise; it does not lie.

Propaganda and indoctrination, together with the control of the military, are effective tools to control people and make them into mindless believers in the ruling authority. Many dictators besides Hitler have used these methods. Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung come to mind. Hitler writes in "Mein Kampf regarding the use of propaganda: "The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain fact, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision". (Botwinick 107). Hitler's aim was to direct the masses to believe that, and I quote Wilhelm Marr, another anti-Semite who lived in the 19th century, "Jews are not only an alien race, they constitute an international conspiracy whose aim is the domination of Germany, Europe, indeed, the whole world" (Reader 312).

To best succeed in getting the desired results of the propaganda is to target the most vulnerable and impressionable section of the society; the children. The movie "Europa! Europa! highlights this indoctrination of the young by showing it from two different viewpoints, Hitler's and Stalin's. When Jupp's parents send him and his brother to Russia for protection, he is separated and ends up in a Russian Bolshevik orphanage. The children are drilled in Stalin's view of communism, which entails total obedience to him, and a sacrifice of individuality for service for the good of the state. One of the scenes shows one of the tricks they use to brainwash the children. During one lecture, the leaders talk about the non-existence of God. Suddenly, one boy exclaims that there is a God and to prove his point, he is asked to pray to God for candy to rain down from heaven. He does what he is told and, of course, no candy materializes. But then the leader asks the kids to pray to Lenin for the same thing and suddenly candy is raining down from the ceiling. The older children realize that someone is throwing candy from a vent in the ceiling, but the effect on the younger kids must be powerful. Later in the movie, when he switches sides and is taken under the wings of an SS officer, he is told about the plans to remove the Jews to create "Lebensraum", living space for the Aryan race. He is not told about plans to kill them all, but he is told that he has to "learn to hate". Once at the school, he has to swear total allegiance to Hitler, and is taught a Jewish hate song that they sing while doing their drills. Another example of the effectiveness of Hitler's propaganda is demonstrated in the movie by the girlfriend of Jupp who becomes pregnant by a Hitler Jugend boy just because he is fulfilling the requirements for a perfect Aryan specimen. Hitler encouraged such encounters between, in his view, perfect Germans. His plan of creating a "pure" Aryan race resulted in special "breeding" houses where carefully selected women and girls were sent to "breed" with men who fulfilled the same physical characteristics, often SS men (Posting 953 by Instructor). It was also a common practice to turn the children against their parents and encourage them to spy and report incidents that seemed to contradict Hitler's agenda. When Leni's mother tells Jupp about the pregnancy, she exclaims with exasperation: "I don't know my daughter any more. Children are not the same these days".

Both of the movies that I have quoted from, take place outside of the concentration camps and the horrible atrocities that occurred in these places are absent from the screen. But I think they put you in the frame of mind of what went on in people's daily lives during these war years, both in Germany and in German occupied countries. People were trying to make sense of it all and they tried to survive any way they could. Many ordinary citizens became heroes in their efforts to try and help the persecuted people and many lost their lives because of it. The monks in the Catholic French school in "Au Revoir Les Enfants", the mother of Leni in the movie "Europa! Europa! who finds out Jupp is Jewish but vows not to tell, as does the German soldier who befriends Jupp and also discovers that he is Jewish but tells him that "all Germans are not the same", all are examples of people who refused to accept Hitler's scheme. But there were also many people who accepted the situation or didn't want to know the true extent of what was going on. And many yet, agreed with Hitler's policies and did not hesitate to help him achieve his insane goal. I think the end of Europa! Europa! very effectively demonstrates this point. The war is over and Jupp is captured by the Russians. He tries to explain that he is Jewish and that he only pretended to be a German soldier to survive. The Russian soldier shows him the passing rows of emancipated concentration camp survivors and tells him that these are Jews, he cannot possible be one of them since he is not suffering any ill-effects from the war. Jupp looks at them and says: "But I didn't know. I didn't know". The Russian soldier turns to the other soldier and says with contempt in his voice: "Another one that didn't know".

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