I recently watched two very different
documentaries about the aftermath of Nazi
Germany’s policy of genocide against Jews,
Gypsies, and other ‘undesirables’ during the
Second World War. Most people have termed the
genocide things like the holocaust or The Final
Solution, but the phrase Nazi Genocide seems a far
more apt term, as both the other terms tend to
focus almost exclusively on the deaths of Jews
(who were about 50% of all people killed in the
death camps), while ignoring all the others
killed. Ancillary to that is the tendency for the
media to overplay the Nazi Genocide vis-à-vis all
other earlier and later examples of genocide,
including those that killed far more many people
and far greater percentages, overall, of the
people that were set out to be killed by the
genocidalists. I get this out of the way, early,
simply because both films deal with controversial
aspects of the Nazi Genocide; the first film with
a victim’s crusade to forgive her oppressors and
the second with a patsy’s blundering in to try and
exonerate some of the crimes committed. The
problems both films faced is that, even to this
day, there are genuine and myriad controversies
regarding genocide, in general (see the denial of
the Armenian genocide), and the Nazi Genocide,
particularly.
As example, the first film, Forgiving Dr. Mengele,
deals with Jewish survivor guilt, and whether or
not the Nazi Genocide was a unique crime against
humanity. Clearly, it was not unique, merely one
amongst hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of
such barbarism that litter human history. It was
one of the largest and most well organized, but
unique? Clearly not, as even the term
‘concentration camp’ did not originate in Nazi
Germany. The second film, Mr. Death: The Rise And
Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., deals with an
earnest but lonely man who becomes an unwitting
accomplice to the silly spectacle of Holocaust
Denial, practiced by Anti-Semites ever since the
world’s documentation of the death camps at the
close of the European Theater.
Yet, both films show the equally unwitting role
that many Jewish groups have in perpetuating
Anti-Semitism. In the first film, the sense of
bizarre entitlement to suffering shown by groups
devoted to keeping the Holocaust’s memory going,
has alienated many other groups who might be
allies; in America alone blacks, who suffered an
even longer and more brutal campaign of slavery
and genocide, one which went on for centuries, not
just a decade, and across the New World, are
amongst the groups where Anti-Semitism sees its
highest levels, mainly because of the insistence
of many Jewish groups that their suffering and
pain is ‘unique.’ The second film displays this
insane form of self-loathing even more starkly, as
the film’ subject, one Fred Leuchter, an expert on
humane capital punishment techniques, is hired by
a Holocaust Denier to gather evidence at Auschwitz
that there were never any gas chambers, does so,
and speaks out against the ‘myth’ of mass gassing.
It’s clear, from the film’s own interviews with
other experts, that Leuchter was far out of his
league, but so stuck on his ego’s being stroked by
being named an ‘expert,’ that he was played for a
patsy- possibly the biggest one since Lee Harvey
Oswald. Yet, this poor, deluded soul finds his
life and livelihood utterly destroyed by
mean-spirited members of Jewish political groups
that the rashness and harshness of their
denunciations actually makes the Holocaust Deniers
seem the more reasonable lot, and the Jewish
groups paranoid and fearful of some ‘secret’ being
revealed.
(1)
Forgiving Dr. Mengele is an 80 minute long 2006
film by Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh, which follows
several years in the life of Eva Mozes Kor, one of
Dr. Josef Mengele’s twin experiment subjects.
Through the film we see the usual death camp
images, those of Eva and her twin sister Miriam’s
youth after the war, and we follow her life
chronologically into the 1990s, where she sees her
sister die, due to complications from the Mengele
experiments, which had forced Eva to donate one of
her kidneys to Eva decades earlier. Unfortunately,
the fact that the film focuses so intensely on Kor
detracts from its ability to deal with larger
issues. Also, despite the generous presentation of
Kor, the fact is that she is not a particularly
deep, interesting, nor even nice person. At least
in what is presented in the film. She champions
the doctrine of unilateral forgiveness for the
Nazis, even as she belittles many other of the
victims who cannot do it. In a near-perfect world
one would hope that Kor would see not only how
self-serving her claims and actions are, but also
how damaging it is to the notion that perpetrators
of crimes be held accountable for those crimes
(the second film actually proves that need). Her
own needs (psychological, spiritual, mental) seem
to trump others, and even seem to be directed by a
need for the limelight. After all, this is a woman
who, prior to becoming an outspoken advocate of
her position, was but a licensed realtor. I.e.-
she had accomplished nothing grand, even as she
burned over the injustices she suffered as a
child. It seems rather obvious that one of the
forces driving her is a need to be famed and
respected and well known and real estate just was
not the place to get that. So, she goes on her
crusade, gains notoriety, visits death camps,
lectures to children, opens her own Holocaust
museum (which is torched and rebuilt), spars with
less forgiving Holocaust victims, and even
publicly forgives a Nazi doctor named Munch (a
rather hollow gesture since he was legally
exonerated of war crimes in the tribunals
following the war).
But, then we get to see
some of Kor’s less martyr-like side. On one of her
many trips to Israel, she is invited to a congress
with Palestinians, to hear their grievances, and
this is where we see that many of her claims ring
false and hollow, for, as a supporter of the
oppressive Israeli regime (one that is nowhere as
bad as the Nazis, but still has committed
countless atrocities and murders, equal to or
surpassing those committed against them) she not
only displays no empathy for the Palestinians (her
body language betrays her declarations) but
insinuates that they are not honest in what they
say.
Overall, while Forgiving Dr. Mengele tries to
champion her as a force for good it unwittingly
shows her to be a hypocrite whose motives can
legitimately be questioned by both Jews and Arabs.
(2)
The motives of Fred Leuchter are a bit more
transparent than those of Kor. His problem (other
than the fact that he comes off as a typical
monomaniacal nerd- albeit with a penchant for
killing people) is not in a lack in his soul but
in a lack of intelligence (humorously displayed
when Leuchter admits to smoking six packs of
cigarets a day and downing forty cups of coffee,
as well). As Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred
A. Leuchter, Jr. opens we get several actually
brilliant monologues on the need for humanity in
criminal punishment that seem to establish the
intellectual bona fides of Leuchter (especially
the one wherein he speaks of the prison staff
that, after years of getting to know a prisoner,
have to execute that person). That many critics
have mocked Leuchter’s claims in this area shows
their inhumanity, not any lack on Leuchter’s part.
Then, about a third of
the way in to the 90 minute film by noted
documentarian Errol Morris, all of the sympathy
the viewer builds up for Leuchter is drained away
when we see him riding his own ego-stroke (not any
bigotry) into career suicide by defending a
Holocaust Denier, Ernst Zundel, with ‘scientific’
and forensic techniques that even laymen can see
are absurd. That the film has a forensic lab
expert go into an extensive debunking of
Leuchter’s failures seems almost unnecessary, but
it effectively does one thing: it also debunks
those who claim Leuchter is a bigot. A fool? Yes.
An egoist? Yes. But a bigot? Absolutely not. It
also does one other thing; it builds back some of
the initial sympathy the viewer feels for Leuchter
because he seems to have been mowed down by what
Norman Finkelstein calls the Holocaust, Inc. crowd
(his marriage and career were sabotaged by the
harassment of these folks)- i.e.- those people who
profit personally and financially by keeping alive
the idea that the Nazi Genocide was some
aberration in the human heart and psyche rather
than a sadly predictable event, given the nature
of World War Two- human history’s worst mass
slaughter. Holocaust Inc. is the flip side of the
same sick coin the Holocaust Deniers occupy, and
to see the dimwitted Lechter buffeted about by
these two extremist groups is almost dizzying, and
it’s little wonder that Leuchter has faded from
public view after the release of this film in
1999.
Interestingly, as clueless as Lechter is
portrayed, it seems that Morris was equally
clueless over how the film would be viewed.
Initially, many people felt the film supported
Holocaust Denial, so Morris had to go back and
re-edit the film to make clear that the film
viewed Leuchter as an unwitting dupe, but in doing
so, he also made unwittingly clearer the role the
Holocaust Inc. types have in warping the
historical realities of World War Two, and how
those types actually need the Holocaust Deniers,
lest all their revenue sources would dry up.
Compared to Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Mr. Death is a
visually virtuoso film, from its stunning opening
credits to its assorted escapades with Leuchter,
to its showing of Thomas Edison’s infamous film
depicting the barbaric electrocution of an
elephant which had been tortured by one of its
masters and killed him in revenge, and on and on.
It is also a great film and documentary. Leuchter
is shown in all his glory and ridiculousness,
whereas Eva Kor is barely revealed at all.
(3)
Kor is, at the end of Forgiving Dr. Mengele, as at
its beginning, almost a stereotype. And this is
shown because nowhere in the film does Kor ever
show a hint of insight into her own prejudices,
while Leuchter, as flawed as he is by his own
overweening pride in his work (as well as a belief
in the Fallacy of the Pan-Genius- i.e.- someone
great in one area of life being great in all areas
of life), at least understands his limits, for
early on, when asked why he was hired to build a
lethal injection device for New Jersey, when he
had no expertise in that area, admits it was
because the bureaucrats figured expertise in
electric chairs meant he had to be an expert in
all forms of death. The anecdote of a New Jersey
commissioner giving him a contract once he learned
leuchter built the Tennessee electric chair is
priceless because it so avidly and manifestly
displays the idiocy of most bureaucrats’ mindsets.
Such insights abound in Mr. Death: The Rise And
Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. No such insights can
be found in Forgiving Dr. Mengele. That does not
mean it should not be viewed, but it does mean Mr.
Death should not be missed.
--
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'What is remarkable about these many words is that
Schneider keeps an open mind,
approaches each film afresh, and doesn't always
repeat the same judgments.
An ideal critic tries to start over again with
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--
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