A True Horror Story
Re Pat H. Broeske’s “Filming on a Killing Ground,” April 23:
I was dismayed by director Robert M. Young’s comments on the making of “Triumph of the Spirit.”
It appears that Mr. Young suffers from moral immaturity. How dare a man who didn’t have the stomach to watch the well-intentioned but sanitized and censored depiction of atrocity in “Holocaust” make a film in Auschwitz about victims of the Holocaust? It sounds as if what he really wants to do is make “Rocky at Auschwitz.”
His rationalization for not showing some of the atrocities in a realistic way are specious and self-serving. So atrocity is not aesthetically pleasing and tends to be horrific. So what? The story of Auschwitz is a horror story--all the more so because it really happened.
To speak of any sort of triumph in connection with Auschwitz is an obscenity.
There is no “triumph” in survival--merely the profound obligation to bear witness. I think producer Arnold Kopelson should fire Mr. Young and get a director who can better handle the complexities of the human response to evil--someone like Martin Scorsese.
ROSEMARY KOENIG
Placentia
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