Drawing heavily on interviews with two controversial Jewish writers--Gulie Ne'eman Arad and Norman Finkelstein--filmmaker Paul Yule's cynical British documentary takes on the Jewish World Congress, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Project, museums and monuments worldwide, and ultimately, the State of Israel, in its exploration of the manipulation of the legacy of the Holocaust. While Arad and Finkelstein's charges of Holocaust profiteering/exploitation are (weakly) rebutted by other interviewees (including Elie Wiesel), the film ultimately fails to effectively answer the central question it poses: namely, why does the Holocaust loom so large in collective memory? Far from shadowy political conspiracies, some events in history simply capture the shared imagination more readily than others: the sinking of the Titanic was not as historically important as that of the Lusitania, nor as deadly as that of the Sultana, but Hollywood isn't rushing to put those stories on celluloid. While this purposefully provocative program doesn't necessarily play into the hands of Holocaust deniers, it will certainly find a sympathetic audience among anti-Semites. Optional. Aud: C, P. (R. Reagan)
After Auschwitz: Battle for the Holocaust
(2001) 50 min. $99: high schools & public libraries; $275: colleges & universities. The Cinema Guild. PPR. ISBN: 0-7815-0911-4. Volume 17, Issue 4
After Auschwitz: Battle for the Holocaust
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