‘Holocaust’: Keeping the Truth Alive--Again : Television: Well before ‘Schindler’s List,’ a miniseries awakened millions to the horror of Nazi genocide. It returns to American airwaves for the first time in 15 years.

More than 15 years before “Schindler’s List,” another Hollywood film awakened perhaps as many as 400 million TV viewers around the world to the horror of Nazi genocide during World War II, changed laws in Germany and helped pave the way for Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed film.

“Holocaust,” an eight-hour miniseries first broadcast on NBC in the spring of 1978 and then rerun the following year, was “groundbreaking,” according to those involved in making it, in that it was the first mass-media dramatization about the entirety of the Holocaust--and certainly the most seen.

In commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Week, cable’s Family Channel will present the mini-series for the first time on American television since 1979, Sunday through Thursday at 8 p.m.

“There’s no question that the impact of ‘Holocaust’ was unlike anything in terms of bringing knowledge and issues of history to a great mass of people,” said Gerald Green, the novelist who researched and wrote the screenplay, which told the story of two fictional German families--one Jewish, one headed by a rising star in the Nazi Party--and the betrayal, separation, madness and fear that befell them.

“Back then you had Christian neighbors coming out of houses saying, ‘Did you know this was happening?’ Holocaust was just a word to many of these people,” Green said. “I’m not taking all the credit. There had been many documentaries on the Holocaust that were excellent and in many cases got closer to the truth than any fictitious drama could. But none were seen by the amount of people who saw this show. This reached and made an impression on the average American sitting in farmhouses in Duluth, Minn.”

*

Just as “Schindler’s List” dominated this year’s Oscars, “Holocaust” swept the Emmys, winning eight, including outstanding limited series. Meryl Streep, in one of her first major roles, won for outstanding lead actress in a limited series, Michael Moriarty nabbed the outstanding lead actor Emmy, Blanche Baker was honored as outstanding supporting actress, Marvin Chomsky won for his directing and Green for his script.

The most dramatic and perhaps crucial measure of the film’s impact is that it prompted the German legislature to repeal the statute of limitations on Nazi war crimes.

“There were a bunch of Nazi criminals hiding in South America who were planning the very next year to come home to joyful reunions,” Chomsky recalled. “The show reached 19 million or 20 million households in Germany alone. ‘Schindler’s List’ probably will be seen by no more than 2 million people there. And it prompted countless and interminable conversations and discussions and historical analysis, and it got kids in Germany finally asking their fathers, ‘What did you do in the war?’ ”

“I want it on my tombstone that I was partially responsible for changing the laws of West Germany and permitting the prosecution of more Nazi war criminals,” said Green, who also wrote the novel “The Last Angry Man” among other books, films and TV shows. “That’s not a bad accomplishment.”

James Woods, who starred in “Holocaust” as a Jewish artist married to Streep’s character, said that when he was in Germany making the film back in 1977, he read a poll that indicated that 85% of German 12-year-olds did not even know who Adolf Hitler was. “Holocaust,” he said, changed that.

“I’ve done a lot of true-life stories in my life, but this was the most remarkable,” Woods said. “It showed that 6 million Jews were murdered, but it also didn’t forget that another 6 million Gypsies and homosexuals and Catholics and communists and political dissidents died in the camps too. Through this family, it depicted all aspects of the Holocaust, from Kristalnacht to the Warsaw ghetto to the camps to the mass shooting executions at Babi Yar. It presented a lot of factual truths that weren’t shown in ‘Schindler’s List.’ ”

While remembrance of the Holocaust has already been boosted inordinately by Spielberg’s film, Chomsky is “quite pleased” that the miniseries will be available again in the United States.

*

“Spielberg’s picture certainly opened some people’s eyes, and seeing this may open them wider or give them a new perspective or understanding,” he said. “We teach precious little in the United States about what goes on or what happened anywhere else, and just like we teach the Bible stories over and over to each new generation, the Holocaust should be recounted repeatedly in the lexicon of man’s inhumanity to man.”

Green agreed. “Since we told the story to the world, the revisionists--the ones who want to pretend it never happened--had to come out and work hard to spread their lies and slander, and that is still going on,” he said. “So I don’t think you can ever have too many movies or books or articles about this.”

Woods said he has encountered some of these revisionists first-hand. During an interview, an American journalist asked Woods where they got the story about millions of people being thrown into labor camps and killed.

“This supposedly was an educated, professional guy, and he thought it was some remarkably interesting flight of fancy,” Woods said. “You really can’t know the joy of having participated in such a project that keeps truth alive and maybe prods people into understanding or looking more deeply into all human-rights abuses that occur, sadly, all the rest of our lives.

“I mean, this is just 15 short years after millions and millions of people saw our miniseries and already they had to be reminded by ‘Schindler’s List.’ In just 15 years it was being forgotten, and I dread to say that 15 years from now, it might be forgotten again.”