Jews Decry Tribute to Filmmaker Riefenstahl

Jewish leaders and activists Sunday expressed outrage over a Hollywood film-preservation group’s tribute to controversial German movie maker Leni Riefenstahl, whose 1934 documentary on the Nazis is considered one of the most notorious propaganda films ever made.

“She may be a fantastic artist, but what her films accomplished are just as sinful as the acts themselves,” said Renee Firestone, a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz who now volunteers at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “How do you think I feel? She contributed the propaganda that led to the destruction of Jews.”

Riefenstahl’s appearance this weekend at the film festival sponsored by Cinecon--a little-known but respected international group of motion-picture buffs--was not publicized, and caught many Jewish leaders and activists by surprise. The 95-year-old filmmaker was honored at the event Saturday and was among a dozen people being given “career achievement” awards during the three-day convention in Glendale, which ends today.

“They sneaked her into town,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “What they were doing was part of a worldwide campaign, not only to clean up Leni Riefenstahl’s so-called good name, but part of a bigger campaign to whitewash the entire Nazi era.”

While stopping short of accusing Riefenstahl of genocide, several Jewish leaders called the German artist a tacit participant in the deaths of millions of people. It was her film--”Triumph of the Will”--that glorified the Nazi regime with its goose-stepping soldiers, banner parades and adoring crowds saluting their leader, Adolf Hitler.

“As a filmmaker, she was part of making those images. I don’t think she was a bystander,” said Stephen J. Sass, president of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California. “The result of that propaganda was to stir up a nation.”

Sass and others said Riefenstahl’s work is important only as a historical record about Nazi Germany and that it is wrong to idealize the filmmaker.

Last month, protesters picketed a Hamburg photographic exhibit of Riefenstahl’s work, and many said there would have been widespread reaction here if her local appearance had been publicized.

Cinecon officials Sunday said Riefenstahl’s presence was not publicized because she is in ill health and organizers didn’t know she would be appearing at the festival until the last minute. Organizers dismissed the criticism of their decision to honor Riefenstahl.

“We’re not honoring her for political reasons,” said Kevin John Charbeneau, president of Cinecon, which is based in Hollywood and has 1,400 members worldwide. “She’s an artist first and foremost. That is what we are celebrating. I can understand people are going to be upset, but she was not the head of Germany. She was not Hitler.

“How was she going to turn down the leader of that country for work?” Charbeneau added. “I think people need a scapegoat and she is being used as a scapegoat. She has regrets, but she can’t rewrite history that was formed around her.”

Riefenstahl has long held that she was not aware of the horrors of the Nazi regime, although she has acknowledged being an admirer of Adolf Hitler. She declined to speak to reporters Sunday.

Participants at the festival, held at a Glendale hotel, had mixed reactions to Riefenstahl’s appearance--her first visit to the Southland since 1938--and the viewing of her film “The White Hell of Piz Palu,” a silent film about a mountain adventure.

After a showing of her picture, about 300 people stood and applauded as the German filmmaker walked down the aisle to the front of the theater to greet the audience.

One man, however, raised his voice above the applause.

“Shame, shame on you,” yelled Bob Gelfand , 49, of Lakewood.

“If I had known this festival was going to honor the Nazi war machine I would not have come,” Gelfand said minutes after the film ended. “When I bought my ticket, I didn’t know she would be here. She was a propagandist for the death machine.”

In a brief comment after her film was screened Sunday, Riefenstahl said: “I’m very happy to be here. You are very kind. I’m thrilled people like my movies.”

Some festival participants lined up for her autograph, while still others did not know what to think.

“I was surprised she was going to be here, but I guess it’s best to forgive and forget,” said Robert Dahdah, a New York director and producer. “We don’t know what we would have done in her situation to stay alive.”

Israel Bick, for one, did not agree.

“I don’t associate with Nazis,” said Bick, a movie memorabilia dealer, who was running a stand at the festival. “I wouldn’t get 10 feet close to her. . . . You can’t separate her art from her. In the camps, the artists weren’t treated any differently. They burned the artists up with all the others.”

In the view of some Cinecon members, however, Riefenstahl’s art could be separated from its political implications. They said they were excited to have the opportunity to meet her.

“I think it’s great that she’s here,” said Mark Bailie, 40, a film buff from Valley Center, near Escondido. “It’s unfair to hold against her something that happened so long ago. I think she was caught up in something that she didn’t understand. . . . Let the woman rest in peace.”

Although her work is highly regarded by film critics because of her cinematic techniques, some filmmakers expressed concern that the tribute to Riefenstahl lacked a discussion about the implications of her films.

“I’m rather saddened about what took place,” said Arnold Schwartzman, co-chairman of the British Academy of Film and Television Art in Los Angeles, who also produced an Oscar-winning documentary about the Holocaust. “It seems rather sneaky the way they did it, knowing there’ll be protests. Obviously there was some hidden agenda there.”

Schwartzman, who was not at the festival, said it was inappropriate to honor Riefenstahl without acknowledging her role in furthering Hitler’s campaign.

“One can’t dispute the lady’s genius and that she has made some wonderful films, but I think she obviously lacked judgment in political direction,” he said. “Her films were probably the most important propaganda tool that Hitler ever had. To base an award on [these films] is poor judgment, in the same way she showed poor judgment in making the films.”

Cooper said the Wiesenthal Center shows visitors portions of “Triumph of the Will” as an example of Nazi propaganda, but he said that honoring Riefenstahl’s films without examining the context of how they were used furthers the goals of neo-Nazis.

Indeed, many Jewish leaders also questioned how Cinecon could separate Riefenstahl’s creative talents from her association with the Third Reich. And they said the Riefenstahl episode spoke to a more fundamental moral issue: Can artists be viewed without regard to their historical context?

“It’s as wrong as awarding Adolf Hitler the interior design award if it turned out he was a gifted wall painter,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of the Jewish Studies Institute at Yeshiva of Los Angeles, an Orthodox institution on the Westside. “It’s an insult to the memory of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, as well as the many brave German artists who had the guts to stand up to Hitler at great personal sacrifice.”

Osias Goren, chairman of Martyr’s Memorial-Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, an affiliate of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, also voiced outrage about the tribute.

“This person may have been very efficient in the media she was working, she may have been a genius. But so were some of the doctors who conducted experiments on Jewish women and those who cremated bodies.”