ZGram - 8/23/2002 - "Give 'em hell, Leni Riefenstahl!"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 23, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Here is another item that speaks for itself!  Let's have another show 
trial - this time, Riefenstahl vs. Pinkepank!   It can only benefit 
the Cause!

[START]

'Hitler's filmmaker' turns 100

Riefenstahl facing lawsuit for Holocaust denial

BERLIN, Germany --German prosecutors have interrupted the 100th 
birthday celebrations of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl by announcing 
they are investigating a statement she made on Gypsy film extras who 
perished in death camps.

Riefenstahl, who gained notoriety for the films she made for the 
Nazis, is celebrating her 100th birthday Thursday amid renewed 
criticism of her work for the Third Reich.

As the centenarian prepared to celebrate on Thursday near her home 
outside Munich with 200 guests, including former tennis champion 
Boris Becker, a Gypsy organisation announced it was suing her over 
allegations she used slave laborers as extras in her film "Lowlands" 
between 1940 and 1942.

The Cologne-based organization Rom says Riefenstahl used 120 Gypsies 
from concentration camps in Salzburg and Berlin, then failed to 
prevent them from being returned to the Nazi camp system, where many 
died.

The group said it was suing Riefenstahl for Holocaust denial, a crime 
in Germany, for dismissing the allegations as nonsense in an 
interview printed in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in April.

"We saw all the Gypsies that played in 'Lowlands' again after the 
war," Riefenstahl was quoted as saying. "Nothing happened to them."

Iris Pinkepank, spokeswoman for Rom, told The Associated Press her 
organization could prove many died by comparing Riefenstahl's own 
lists of people appearing in the film to records from the Nazi 
deathcamp at Auschwitz.

"Leni Riefenstahl is a woman who cares for her own history -- she 
makes sure that only the truth she wants to read and only her version 
is published," Pinkepank said. "But there are some survivors still 
living and we have contact with them and they want their version to 
be told, they wanted to have a voice."

Frankfurt state prosecutors said they had started a preliminary 
investigation, which could lead to charges. The filmmaker later 
issued a statement saying her remarks on their survival had been a 
misunderstanding and that she regretted the Nazi persecution of 
Gypsies.

A rise with Hitler

German dictator Adolf Hitler selected the dancer-turned-actress to be 
Nazi Germany's official filmmaker and gave her vast resources to make 
movies that idealized and glorified Nazism.

She gained wide acclaim for "Triumph of the Will," a documentary on 
the 1934 Nuremberg rally, and "Olympia," a filmed record of the 1936 
Berlin Olympics.

But she was ostracized after World War II and spent an active later 
life protesting against condemnation of her Nazi links. In recent 
years she has earned a partial rehabilitation in Germany and Thursday 
many newspapers gave extensive coverage to her birthday.

Last week Riefenstahl released her first film in half a century, 
"Underwater Impressions," a celebration of marine life mainly in the 
Indian Ocean. She has outlived most of her critics but some are 
determined to remind the world of her past.

Riefenstahl always denied political involvement with the Nazi party 
or any romantic link with Hitler. She defended her work by saying she 
was only filming what was happening in Germany at the time.

"In 1934 people were crazy and there was great enthusiasm for Hitler. 
We had to try and find that with our camera," she told CNN in a 1994 
interview.

Although she admitted "Triumph of the Will" was used to promote Nazi 
ideals, she said that was not her intention. "One can use it for 
propaganda, but ... it is no propaganda film. There is not one single 
anti-Semitic word in my film," she told The Associated Press.

'A big lie'

But her biographer, Rainer Rother, said the filmmaker's view is 
simplistic. "I think she might not have been an anti-Semitic woman, 
but she still was aware of what was going on."

Prof. Brian Winston, a media scholar at the University of 
Westminster, agreed. "Riefenstahl represents a big lie and she's been 
lying for 50 years. She was extremely close to the regime and her 
only defense is that she wasn't a party member," he told CNN.

Riefenstahl was acquitted twice by allied "denazification courts" 
after the war ended in 1945 but was jailed by French occupation 
authorities for helping the Nazi propaganda machine. Blacklisted as a 
filmmaker, she turned to still photography, although her work was 
boycotted by West German magazines.

She rebuilt her reputation with photographs of Nuba tribesmen in 
southern Sudan and at the age of 72 took up diving, the subject of 
her latest film. But she says age is finally slowing her down.

After her birthday, she said, she hopes to put on her wet suit and go 
diving again.

-- From CNN.com europe

[END]

 
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/22/riefenstahl.age.100/index.html