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There's
an old joke that inside every German there's a
Nazi yearning to get out. While a gross overstatement,
there is, I'm unhappy to report, more than a little
truth to that old chestnut. But more about that
later.
Last week I had the opportunity in Munich to attend
a screening of Roman Polanski's new film The Pianist,
a film that will not premiere in the United States
for another month. This film is based on the true
story of the Polish Jewish piano virtuoso Wladyslaw
Szpilman, who survived the entire Nazi occupation
of Warsaw hiding in the Ghetto and at times being
hidden right under the noses of the Nazis in safe
houses maintained by the Polish Resistance. Simply
put, Polanski's film is a masterpiece. It is considerably
better than Schindler's List and is undoubtedly
the greatest Holocaust movie of all time. The
Pianist has already won the Palm d'Or at Cannes.
It deserves to win the Oscar.
What
is remarkable about the film is its brutal and
unflinching honesty. It avoids the cheap sentimentality
that marred the otherwise exemplary Schindler's
List. The film also avoids stereotypes as much
as possible. Not all of the Jews behave nobly,
and one Nazi officer at the end of the film is
shown to have at least one spark of humanity left
in his otherwise accursed soul. Adrien Brody delivers
a stunning performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman,
an incredibly demanding role as he is in virtually
every scene. The cinematography is brilliant,
and even when we are not seeing the title character
in action, the events occurring on film are from
the point of view of the protagonist, as though
we are watching along with him as he peeks out
of his hiding places to see Germans murdering
Jews just for the sheer sport of it, and later
on, Germans getting a taste of their own medicine
when the Warsaw Uprising begins.
 In
addition to exposing the full range of Germanic
horrors that made up the Holocaust-I don't want
to give too much of the movie away, but there
is one scene in which the Germans summarily execute
an entire family of Jews that is so shocking in
its brutality that you'll want go home and break
every piece of Dresden china in the cupboard and
take a sledgehammer to every yuppie scum's Beamer
in the parking lot-The Pianist is a testament
to the indefatigable spirit of life that refuses
"to go gentle into the night." In particular,
the humanizing influence of art, of the will to
create, is expertly juxtaposed by Polanski to
the German will to destroy, indeed, to the Germanic
tendency to embrace all of the negative energy
of the universe. In the battle between artistic
matter and Germanic anti-matter, it is art that
ultimately triumphs.
The
execrable German Marxist philosopher Theodor W.
Adorno (who is best known today as the model for
the character Wendall Kretzschmar, one of the
manifestations of the Devil in Thomas Mann's novel
Doktor Faustus), once famously remarked that "after
Auschwitz there can be no art." Although
Adorno was no Nazi (indeed, he spent World War
II in exile in Hollywood where he devoted his
time to denouncing America and ridiculing American
culture, especially "Negro jazz"), his
willingness to deny art to those who had been
brutalized by his fellow countrymen reveals an
arrogance so profound that it is simply beyond
the capacity to analyze. It also is a clear demonstration
of how easily all Germans (whether of the left
or the right) fall into the risible delusion that
they somehow constitute a "master race."
For what Adorno is really saying is that since
German culture has been found wanting no one else
may be permitted to seek meaning and solace from
art.
There
can be only one response to Adorno, and it is
found in the final scene of The Pianist. The War
is over and life has returned to Warsaw. Wladyslaw
Szpilman is performing a concerto accompanied
by a full orchestra. No words are spoken, and
the scene continues as the credits are rolling.
But the message is clear. It is the raised middle
finger, proudly held aloft, and it points towards
Germany, the remnants of the Nazi Party and Theodor
W. Adorno.
Now,
back to the Germans yearning to rediscover their
inner Nazis. I have to admit that it is a strange
experience to watch a Holocaust film in Germany.
It's even stranger when you're the only American
in the midst of about 200 Germans. But perhaps
the strangest thing of all is to watch the reactions
of the Germans as the events of the movie unfold.
You hear a lot about how Germans are so ashamed
today of the behavior of their countrymen during
the Nazi period and about how much they've done
to atone for their past sins. Don't buy that bill
of goods. If the audience of the screening I attended
is any indication of German attitudes in general,
it doesn't augur well for the future. Remember,
this wasn't an audience composed of skinheads
from the neo-Nazi enclaves in Karlsruhe and the
former DDR. This was a group of Germany's best
and brightest: educated, middle class, sophisticated
denizens of a major cosmopolitan city.
One
scene in particular is seared into my consciousness.
It happens about halfway into the film. The Jews
of Warsaw have been herded into the Ghetto. A
street used by the Germans bisects the Ghetto.
While a group of Jews is waiting to cross to the
other side of the street, several Nazi thugs force
some elderly Jews to dance at an increasingly
faster tempo. Weakened by malnutrition, hobbling
on crutches, riddled with heart and lung infirmities,
many of the Jews fall to the ground in sheer agony.
It's a sickening scene. It's the kind of scene
that makes you ashamed that your last name is
Grim. Hell, it's the kind of scene that makes
you ashamed that you listen to Beethoven. If an
American soldier had done the same to a German
or Jap POW he would have been thrown into the
brig for life or cashiered out of the service
on a Section 8. But there they were, today's educated,
freedom-loving, let's-all-hold-hands-and-love-one-another
Germans, laughing at torture.
If
there is a more sickening spectacle than Germans
finding humor in what their fathers and grandfathers
did to the Jews, if there is a more perfect example
of the utter lack if humanity at the core of the
German nation, I am unaware of it. There is something
terribly wrong with Germany and the German Volk.
The German soul is a deep abyss, a fetid, stinking
morass that befouls the community of nations.
But wait, there's more.
Another
scene from the movie that stands out is when an
SS guard announces to a half-starving Jewish work
detail that they will be receiving an additional
portion of bread with their rations, one that
they can sell to other Jews, because "everybody
knows how clever the Jews are at selling things."
This time the audience fairly rolled with laughter.
I
was tempted to call in an airstrike on the theater,
or at the very least to bitch slap a couple of
hundred Germans, but I managed to hold my fire
knowing that ultimately any World War II movie
ends badly for the Germans. Normally I don't talk
back to the screen at the movies, but I do have
to admit that I did yell out " U S A"
and pumped my fist in the air when the Szpilman
family listened to the announcement on the radio
that the United States had declared war on Germany.
And I also do have to admit that it felt mighty
fine to yell out "shoot those damn Nazis"
when the film showed the Jews starting to fight
back during the Warsaw Uprising.
It's
funny how quiet the theater became when near the
film's end a group of SS goons were shown in a
holding camp awaiting transportation to a deserved
harsh fate in the Russian gulag. And then it became
clear as a bell. German shame for World War II
does not result from a moral awareness of the
innumerable crimes and atrocities committed by
the Germans. No, the Germans are ashamed because
they got their rear ends handed back to them by
a bunch of Yanks, Russkies and Brits who they
considered-and still consider-to be members of
inferior races.
After
the movie was over I strolled along Schellingstrasse
in the Schwabing district of Munich. By chance
I happened to pass the site of the original headquarters
of the Nazi Party. It's an interior decorating
company now. How appropriate. On the surface Germany
may be a changed nation, far removed from the
heyday of its Nazi period. But it's all a façade.
The wallpaper and carpeting may be new, the portraits
of Hitler may have been replaced by African objets
d'art, but the foundation of the structure is
Nazi through and through.
And
as the German economy plunges further into a recession
that is largely of its own making, as even German
economists begin to notice the disturbing parallels
between the economies of 2002 and 1932, the question
remains as to how long it will be before the Germans
let their inner Nazis manifest themselves in public.
The Eternal Nazi, I'm afraid, will be with us
as long as there is a German nation. The Pianist
is a great film and an even greater cautionary
tale, because history has an unfortunate way of
repeating itself.
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