Personal Background:
On reflection, I would not have written an essay about Hollywood’s failure to produce movies that focused on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust from 1930-1962 without the influence of both of my parents.
I believe my lifelong love for history comes from discussions with my father, Dr. Joseph Werlin, Chairman of the University of Houston’s sociology department. Dad read voraciously about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from a wide variety of sources in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Moreover, he had observed the rise of fascism first hand when studying at the University of Berlin and the University of Moscow in 1928-1929. He commented that the killing of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population during the Holocaust and the subsequent resettlement of the survivors either in Israel or the United States emasculated probably forever the Jews historic contribution to European culture.
Dad underscored that the long history of anti-Semitism by European clergy including Martin Luther and the Catholic Church provided the theological foundation for the Holocaust. On the other hand, Dad understood explicitly that Pope John XXIII brought a total new a refreshing perspective to the historical relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism. That is, Dad’s ability to read discussions by European newspapers about topics under review by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council alerted to him that dramatic changes were afoot.
Mom, a lifelong journalist, cut politics to the chase. She felt that only one issue was important “was it good or bad for the Jews! ” Alas, even Jews during “this era of silence” or subsequently have disagreed on whether “Silence was indeed Golden!).
I remember being surprised over Mother’s profound grief over the death of John XXIII. She responded directly to my queries about her feelings for the Pope that he was indeed a special person who took his ecumenical responsibilities to heart.
Introduction:
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust:
I decided to write an essay about Hollywood’s coverage of the Holocaust, after seeing for the first time the movie –“Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust”. In brief, this film discusses how the plight of Jews in Europe has been portrayed – and not portrayed – in mainstream American movies. That is despite the significant influence of Jews of European ancestry at the major studios of Hollywood from 1930 until the early 1960’s the pervasive evils perpetrated against their co-religionists were whitewashed or ignored until the 1960’s.
To a large extent, the 1962 trial and execution of the notorious Adolph Eichmann and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) served as a catalyst in unleashing full revelations about the most notorious crimes in history. Unfortunately, from 1933-1962 there were almost no witnesses to or advocates for victims of the holocaust.
We should be mindful that Hollywood has completely altered its coverage of anti-Semitism and the holocaust. That is, currently filmmakers and their audience from disparate backgrounds feel a compelling need to identify with the victims of the holocaust. The presence of Holocaust centers in many metropolitan areas is a testament to the universal concerns about human rights.
Moreover, movie directors have been willing to tackle heretofore forbidden topics such as: (1) the failure of Christian clergy to speak out against anti-Semitism (“Amen”) (2) Jewish Kapos who carried out the hideous orders of their SS concentration camp overseers and (3) detailed footage of the despicable condition of European Jewry (“Shoah”).
From today’s perspective, it is hard to comprehend just how controversial the subject of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust really was for movie producers. Director Elia Kazan described the climate in the immediate post-World War II years: “Try to put yourself back in American films in 1946, where the word ‘Jew’ was never mentioned before. For the first time, someone said that America was full of anti-Semitism (“Gentleman’s Agreement”), both conscious and unconscious, and among the best and most liberal people.” It should be noted that many prominent Jews actively opposed Hollywood’s calling attention to anti-Semitism in a film, because they feared it might increase anti-Semitic feeling.
Although hating Jews might not have been respectable after World War II, anti-Semitism in America did not disappear overnight. Studies actually show that there was a sharp rise in the public’s awareness of anti-Semitism in June 1944, and this did not fall until some time between 1946 and 1950. In addition, over the period between 1938 and 1950, the percentage who reported “hearing criticism of Jews” was highest in 1946, with a sharp drop thereafter through 1950.
“Of particular interest is the assertion,” according to Charles Herbert Stamber in his 1966 study “Jews in the Mind of America,” “that anti-Semitism was growing in the late 1940’s because ‘the war made us conscious’ of the Jews.”
Although Americans have never recovered from the death of some 3,000 people from the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, we should recall that this is the approximate number of Jews killed every single day for around five years during the Holocaust.
While there was footage of liberated death camps, “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959) and “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), until the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1962 and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the media gave scant attention to the greatest crime in history, and why hundreds of thousands of people participated in this massive genocide.
We are left with the Big Question:
Why was there a conspiracy silence to confront absolute evil especially given the number of prominent Jews in American media?
There are a number of reasons:
(1) Anti-Semitism was rampant in America almost until the Civil Rights Era and the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965)
(2) Leading politicians including members of Congress threatened Hollywood with economic punitive actions and “freedom of speech” restrictions if they criticized Nazi Germany.
(3) Jewish movie moguls feared box office failure
(4) Jewish movie moguls felt that drawing attention to their non-Aryan roots would diminish their power and prestige.
(5) Leaders of major Jewish organizations even after World War II feared a backlash if the industry highlighted anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. They were sensitive to highlighting the victimization of Jews.
Jewish Role in Hollywood
Jews such as the Warner Brothers, Adolf Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Louis Mayer, and Samuel Goldwyn while not “inventing Hollywood” certainly dominated the production and distribution of movies. We should note that these men largely felt that their mission was “entertaining, not educating their primarily gentile audience.”
While generalizations can be misleading, these Jewish movie moguls desperately tried to assimilate acquiring ostentatious symbols of wealth and success such as country club membership, the breeding of thoroughbred racehorses, compulsive gambling and sexual high jinks in Las Vegas and Havana, season tickets at the opera and palatial mansions on both coasts. Many of these Jewish Hollywood moguls dumped their old Jewish wives and married younger gentile women—trophy wives. What they sought was entree into those domains of power and influence which had once been exclusively gentile.
Hollywood Treatment of Germany from 1933-1939
“Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust” documented that throughout most of the 1930s, Hollywood studios showed a remarkable reluctance to produce critical movies about Nazism. Instead, they focused on German cleanliness and patriotism. They glorified the endless Nazi torchlight parades. German “book burning” was characterized as a “fraternity prank” rather than a threat to free thought.
J.J. Goldberg, the editor of The Forward and the author of “Jews and Power,” wrote that “a sizable faction on the American political scene [was] so set against helping Jews that it was willing to pay a price, even inhibit the war effort, in order to avoid helping Jews.”
Hollywood 1939-1945
As the political pendulum in the United States swung toward opposing German expansionism, the mood of many motion pictures also changed. Starting with the release of Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939, Hollywood studios increasingly began to produce films dealing with Nazi Germany and the European war. These films, including (among others) The Mortal Storm (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Great Dictator (1940), and A Yank in the RAF (1941), were overtly anti-German and pro-British in tone and substance. It should be noted that anti-German did not mean sympathy toward the plight of Jews. Instead, the movies focused on the evils of German territorial expansionism rather than denigration of human rights. The callous treatment of Jews, gypsies, and mental retards was glossed over.
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust pointed out the special status of Jews.
First of all, until the production by the gentile, independent producer Charlie Chaplin of The Great Dictator (1939) the word “Jew” was almost never mentioned by Hollywood. Instead, non-Arians—were the code name for Jews.
Second, non-interventionist Senators such as Robert Taft, Gerald Nye, Senator William Borah, and Burton Wheeler, Chair of the Interstate Commerce Committee wielded their political influence to stifle anti-German discourse. Wheeler’s committee charged the eight largest motion picture companies of taking advantage of their access to the American people to promote involvement in a war that was none of America’s concern. He threatened that he would investigate “interventionists” in the motion picture industry. Wheeler questioned why so many foreign born were allowed to shape American opinion, causing Roosevelt to observe that the Bible, too, had been written “by mostly foreign-born and Jewish people.” Senator Gerald Nye accused Hollywood of attempting to “drug the reason of the American people” and “rouse war fever. Prominent isolationists included people a broad spectrum of people—Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, General Leonard Wood, the head of the Socialist Party Norman Thomas, and Senator Howard Taft (Mr. Republican).
Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in 1939 warned Jewish Hollywood moguls that the nation would take punitive actions against the studios if “they dragged us into a stupid, losing war against fascism.”
Hollywood 1945-1962
The emergence of the Cold War led to significant concerns about a fifth column operating within the United States. The fear of Communism was heightened by
The conviction of Alger Hiss for perjury,
The Blacklist of the thousands of professionals who were accused of harboring Communist sympathies
The conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
When anti-Semite and racist John Rankin became chairman of the House of Un-American Activities in 1945, the Mississippi congressman claimed he was investigating “one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of the government. … The information we get is that [Hollywood] is the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States. We’re on the trail of the tarantula now, and we’re going to follow through.”
Hollywood responded to this challenge of its loyalty by making benign, non controversial films. The Holocaust hero who emerged in Jewish history texts and movies like “Ten Commandments” or “Exodus” was an amalgam of images and ideals, a figure who embodied both the fortitude of a Maccabean zealot and the patriotism of an American freedom-fighter.
In essence, Hollywood sought to inspire loyalty of America among second and third generation American Jews. Hollywood encouraged assimilation and melting into the American culture.
In such an environment, Hollywood was reluctant to tackle controversial themes such as anti-Semitism or the bestiality of the Holocaust. However, despite the resistance of even leaders of the American Jewish Committee a few Hollywood executives timidly treated subjects such as the Holocaust and anti-Semitism on the screen.
Specifically, it was the will of three individuals who fought against all kinds of resistance to forge ahead and treat anti-Semitism on the screen. At Twentieth Century Fox, it was studio head Darryl F. Zanuck and at RKO it was producer Adrian Scott and head of production Dore Schary.
In December 1946, Darryl F. Zanuck, head of production at Twentieth Century Fox, announced that he had bought movie rights to Laura Z. Hobson’s “Gentleman’s Agreement,” a novel about social anti-Semitism. It is the story of a journalist who, in order to expose anti-Semitism, poses as a Jew to experience bigotry firsthand. Zanuck, the only non-Jewish production head of a major Hollywood studio at the time, was excited about doing a film on anti-Semitism. He claimed to be committed to using cinema to attack prejudice and hatred in America and chose to supervise production of the film himself. Zanuck surely was also conscious that any movie made on a social theme would be carefully scrutinized. However, his reputation as a filmmaker ready to tackle difficult subjects had been established long before, and he wanted to continue making his own style of controversial movies. At the same time, the board at Twentieth Century Fox, fearing government intervention, continued to pressure him to produce a film that would not be radical.
Leaders of the Los Angeles Jewish community met at the Warner Brothers Studio with Zanuck, in an effort to discourage production of “Gentleman’s Agreement.” They saw no point in raising the question in the first place.
Zanuck was a shrewd producer, acutely aware of the commercial possibilities of social issue films. One of his trademarks was producing just such controversial movies within an intensely personal drama. He fully understood that this was both an important film and one that had great potential for box office profit.
The movie “Crossfire” (1947) which depicted the murder of a Jewish war veteran ran into strong opposition both within RKO, and the Jewish community. For several years its production was held up. Schary, a Jew, pushed the idea through the studio bureaucracy.
Many American Jewish Committee leaders became paralyzed with fright over what they imagined the consequences of “Crossfire” might be. Elliot Cohen, editor of the American Jewish Committee, made it clear that he would use the power of the press if Schary refused to stop production or, at least, change the character from a Jew to an African-American.
Schary stated 30 years after “Crossfire” was released that he received final approval only when he told the RKO brass, “We’ll make it inexpensively; it can’t lose money.”
Hollywood Avoids Holocaust
During the 1940s and 1950s, World War II movies avoided the Holocaust. Even American Jews in their eagerness to partake in the postwar victory spirit, did not want to call attention to their recent victimization, and were reluctant to criticize Germany, the United States’ new Cold-War ally.
Movies such as “Gentleman’s Agreement” tried to emphasize that anti-Semitism was antithetical to American values as embedded in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Hollywood “danced around the bestial issue of the Holocaust.” The destruction of European Jewry became a saga about democracy, freedom, and anti-totalitarianism. Movies such as “Exodus” were rare.
In “Diary of Anne Frank” emphasis was placed on her statement “In spite of everything, people are really good in their heart.” Many argue that nothing about the Holocaust experience would indicate such optimistic assessments of human nature.
Reliance on resistance stories and heroic tales is certainly not unique to postwar American Jewish education. As philosopher Sidney Hook observed, “The history of every nation is represented to its youth in terms of the exploits of great individuals–mythical or real.” The presentation of such individuals as representative of a particular era constitutes not only a device for simplifying the complexities of history for young children, but also a mechanism for conveying models of behavior. As such, these tales reveal much about the interests and goals of the societies from which they emerge.
Conclusion
The record of Congress, the media, and the establishment on leading social issues highlights our need to be vigilant in defense of our Bill of Rights. We are fortunate that the Internet has unshackled mankind from self-imposed censorship.
Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
