To read the beginning of this series, click here.
To read about the reasoning behind this series, click here.
In my last post, I had learned that the director of the antisemitic film Jew Suss later regretted making the film and pretty much wanted it destroyed.
I want to spend some time learning more about that.
I'm consulting Lord Wiki first.
Veit Harlan was, at one point, married to a Jewish actress—Dora Gerson. The marriage lasted from 1922-1924.
Gerson eventually was murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz.
Later he got married to another actress. I think not Jewish. They had a child named Thomas Harlan
Thomas Harlan looks like a very interesting person.
He researched some of the death camps which led to criminal proceedings.
Harlan was very anti-Nazi. I wonder if he was partly responsible for his father eventually being ashamed of Jew Suss. Thomas was born in 1929. In the article I read yesterday, Thomas Doherty said it was in 1954 that Veit Harlan had this shame. His son would have been 25. I can imagine a young adult pressuring their parents to be less shitty.
Oh!
I just read more from Lord Wiki.
The son-Harlan went to Israel in 1952. And prior to that, he got a degree in philosophy. Yeah. I can imagine a young man like that having some strong opinions.
I'm going to backtrack back to Dad-Harlan.
A film critic has said that the reason Harlan was able to attract the eye of Goebbels is that many of the other talented and/or prominent film directors had fled Nazi Germany.
Post-war, Harlan was charged with antisemitism. He played the they-made-me-do-it card. Some of the Powers-that-Be called bullshit, showing that Harlan made Jew Suss even more antisemitic than what was asked of him. He went above and beyond.
Harlan was charged but then acquitted.
Why was he acquitted?
Well, one of the reasons might be that one of the judges had the Nazi Regime on his resume.
Some Jewish survivors testified and said that after watching Jew Suss, some of the camp guards became more cruel towards them.
So far, I'm not getting the idea from Lord Wiki that Veit Harlan was ashamed of Jew Suss.
In fact, it looked like he fought against criticism.
In 1951, another German filmmaker Erich Luth called for a boycott of Harlan's newer film Immortal Beloved. Understandable. It would be nice if Harlan had been convicted and sent to prison...or at least felt shame and stopped making movies.
Harlan's response to the boycott? He sued Luth. And won...at first. Luth was ordered not to make public announcements about the boycott. Seven years later, another court overruled the decision.
A bit late.
Okay...well....I'm seeing nothing about any regret.
Maybe I misread Doherty's article. Maybe he said it was Harlan's son who was ashamed.
No...just looked.
Maybe Lord Wiki has it wrong?
Anyway. Here's some interesting trivia. One of Harlan's nieces married Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was Jewish, and his wife was ashamed of her family's role in the Holocaust. She was touched that despite her background, the Kubrick family accepted her.
I like stories like that.
It's like Donald Trump and Mary Trump.
I wonder if Mary Trump knows about the Harlan family.
* * *
I am not ready to drop the Harlan family yet. So my plans to go back into the 1920's and early 1930's of the Nazi saga will have to be put on hold.
I'm going to read this PDF about the Harlans.
It's from Zeitgeist Films which appears to be a film distribution company. Unless there are two Zeitgeist Films?
Oh! Okay. I think the PDF is a promotional packet for a documentary they have in their catalogue. It's called Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suss. It was made by Felix Moeller, the same guy who made Forbidden Films, which I talked about in my previous post.
Reading the PDF.
I saw this mentioned before but didn't dive into it.
The movie Inglorious Bastards has a film within a film called Stolz Der Nation, and that was inspired by a Harlan film called Kohlberg.
I've never seen Inglorious Bastards. I think Tim and Jack have, though.
Maybe I'll see it someday.
The PDF has photos of several Veit Harlan descendants. Eight out of eleven have or had some kind of career in the film/theater industry.
I wonder what percentage of people in the film/TV/theater industry have relatives also in the industry...or multiple relatives.
Is it more about talent running in families? Or more about having the connections and support?
The PDF says: Along with Leni Riefenstahl, no name is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years as that of Joseph Goebbels’s favorite director.
Jew Suss was required viewing for concentration camp staff, and it's believed that, in the wider community, it inspired pogroms.
There's some Jo Jo Rabbit kind of stuff here. The PDF says that, as a child, Thomas was a big Hitler and Goebbels fan.
That's a backstory twist I wasn't expecting.
After World War II, Thomas and Veit collaborated on screenplays together.
Once Thomas did his Heel-Face Turn, some of his deeds included setting fire to theaters showing his dad's films and becoming a Nazi hunter.
Thomas was a Communist and anarchist—two things my dad hates. Although he's more passionately outspoken about Communists.
My dad also is a fan of Nazi hunters.
So I wonder how he would view Thomas Harlan.
Thomas had a sister who was an actress. Susanne. She was in one of Veit Harlan's movies. The PDF says her father tormented her and also did the same to his actress wives. So he's not just an asshole antisemitic Nazi but also horrible to the women in his life.
Susanne ended up quitting acting. She became a veterinarian and married a Jewish man whose entire family had died in the Nazi gas chambers.
She eventually committed suicide. Did her father's legacy play a part in that? His earlier abuse of her?
There's one Harlan relative who held onto some of the love for Daddy. Though she says she regrets he never apologized for his Nazism, she will defend him. That put her at odds with Thomas.
Yikes. One of the grandson's Chester says, I feel a strange connection to my grandfather, even though I’ve never known much about that period—maybe because I’ve read about the theory that certain characteristics skip a generation.
Hello, Kylo Ren.
Jessica, the daughter of Susanne (the daughter who died from suicide) believes Grandpa Veit was antisemitic, because his Jewish wife had left him.
You know...I kind of wondering the same thing.
The PDF has a note from the director which says that Jew Suss is one of the few Nazi films that is illegal to show.
I might have read that somewhere yesterday.
* * *
I'm looking at Veit Harlan's filmography on IMDb and wondering if I misread something about Inglorious Bastards. I don't see the movie Kohlberg.
Never mind.
I did some Googling.
It had an alternate title: Burning Hearts.
Now I'm looking at Jew Suss on IMDb.
The trivia page says that an actor named Werner Krauss tried to sabotage the film by offering to play multiple characters. He did this, because he had the idea that Goebbels had a thing against double-casting. But the plan backfired. For this case, Goebbels liked the idea. IMDb says because this would be a way for him to show that all Jewish characters came from the same source.
I think that's an alternate way of saying he wanted to push the idea that Jews all look alike.
Another actor Ferdinand Marian tried to refuse to be in it, but Goebbels made threats regarding Marian's Jewish stepson.
I like hearing about these acts of resistance from actors, Harlan's family, etc.
Well, I think I shall stop here and in the next post, I'll try to get back to the 1920's.
I really want to look at the pre-World War II years to see how much it compares to what we're going through today.
Read my novel: The Dead are Online
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