Anne Frank(PART 2 OF 4)
Anne Frank's Final Days
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Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss
talks about her relationship
with Anne Frank (Part 1)
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"Dear Kitty" Remembering Anne Frank
Part 1 of 6 (Miep Gies 1909-2010)
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In the DVD, the Auschwitz survivor told a story about Anne, which I've never heard before. And what a coincidence! I watched the "Judgment at Nuremberg" DVD, in which I saw an actual historical footage filmed by American soldiers after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Shown in court by prosecuting attorney Colonel Tad Lawson (played by Richard Widmark), the footage of huge piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits was exceptionally gruesome. And suddenly I realized that the Anne Frank's last days is actually part of this concentrartion-camp story.
I wonder if the corpse of Anne Frank was also filmed at the camp.
No, I don't think so. Even if it had been filmed, nobody could ever have recogized it. Anyway, I jotted down my comment:
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■"Catalogue page of the above DVD"
Ummm...interesting remark, but it seems to me that the first part is missing.
You're telling me, Diane... firstly, I pasted the last half, then I tried to paste the first half, but the system didn't accept another comment. I could only edit but the system didn't accept the whole comment because it was too long. So here it is.
Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy), the chief justice in the case, attempts to understand how defendant Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) could have passed sentences resulting in genocide, and by extension how the German people could have turned blind eyes and deaf ears to the Holocaust.
Haywood stays at a mansion which used to be a home of Mrs. Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), the widow of a German general executed by the Allies. When she picks up some personal effects at the mansion, she meets Haywood and both become friends.
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Spencer Tracy & Marlene Dietrich
As a person, Haywood is warm-hearted, romantic and likable, but as a judge he seems hard-boiled, cool-headed and well-disciplined. Mrs. Bertholt tries to convince Haywood that the Germans in general and the defendants in particular didn't know about the Holcaust, and asks him to forgive and free the defendants from the Holcaust-related accusation.
An elderly Jewish man was tried for a relationship with Irene Wallner (Judy Garland), a 16-year-old "Aryan" (German) woman at the time.
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Judy Garland
This relationship was legally defined as improper under the Nuremberg Laws, and the elderly Jewish man was put to death in 1942.
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Richard Widmark
Prosecuting attorney Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) calls Irene as witness since he believes that the nature of their relationship was a mere friendship and that one of the defendents wrongly incriminated the Jewish man.
Defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) now questions Irene and almost accuses that she was in fact involved in sexual relationship with the Jewish man.
Their verbal question-and-answer session seems like an emotionally-charged stream of machine-gun fires. Irene almost bursts into tears.
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Four defendants
Burt Lancaster as Dr. Janning
at the nearest
Although he looks ice-cold, Dr. Ernst Janning was once a well-respected German judge of the Third Reich. He has remained silent so far. In the middle of the machine-gun session, however, he stands up and shouts at the defence attorney to stop harassing Irene, who apparently looks innocent.
In due course you could easily understand that Dr. Janning is a compassionate man. He now asks the chief judge for a permission to state before the tribunal.
Granted, Dr. Janning makes a statement condemning himself and his fellow defendants for "going along" with the Third Reich.
Stunned at the sudden change of the defendent's attitude, the defence attorney gapes at Dr. Janning when he finishes the statement, then tells the court, "If Dr. Janning is guilty, the whole world is guilty because U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. supported eugenics practices like the Third Reich, the Vatican supported Hitler by way of Hitler-Vatican Reichskonkordat in 1933, the Soviet supported Hitler with the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 that allowed Hitler to start World War II, and Winston Churchill once praised Adolf Hitler. Furthermore, the U.S. Air forces dropped the atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing thousands of innocent citizens, if not a million of them. This is clearly a crime against humanity."
At this point, I say to myself, "Oh yeah! the States killed tens of thousands of innocent Japanese citizens by the atomic bombs as well as incendiary bombs, which is almost like the Holcaust. If the Diary of Anne Frank is the accusation against the Third Reich, the movie "Black Rain" (The Story of Yasuko) is the accusation against the United State.
Since the Cold War has just started, Haywood has to choose between patriotism and justice. He rejects the call to let the Nazi judges off lightly to gain Germany's support in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. He sentences all the defendents to life in prison.
At the end of the movie, Ernst Janning personally thanks Judge Haywood for his rulings, saying that it was the right and just decision.
"But please belive me, Judge Haywood, I didn't know about the Holcaust."
"I know you're innocent as far as the Holcaust is concerned."
Then, why didn't he free the four defendants from the crime as Mrs. Bertholt asked him?
Well, I suppose somebody has to take responsibilty for the crime.
Otherwise human beings wouldn't learn from the mistakes.
Yet, it seems to me that the United States hasn't learned the lesson because the military-industrial complex is producing new weapons called "drones"---unmanned airplanes---that dropped bombs in Afghanistan, creating another Anne Frank as well as Yasuko stories.
Although Ernst Janning thanked Judge Haywood, Mrs. Bertholt didn't.
She never forgave him, she asked him for forgiveness in the first place, though.
This story is simple and straightforward on the surface, yet quite complicated on a personal basis.
So, Kato, you're a pacifist, aren't you?
Yes, I am.
I'm glad to hear that. By the way, tell me a little bit about the "Black Rain" story.
I know you're interested in the story. So, I also added some comment to the catalogue page.
(To be followed)