Movies Present Holocaust as We’d Like It to Be

“Jakob the Liar,” the newest mass-market movie set against the backdrop of the destruction of European Jewry, ably exemplifies the transition of the Holocaust from historic tragedy to creative metaphor. Moviegoers will appreciate Robin Williams’ depiction of a character whose humanity remains intact even under the most inhuman of circumstances, for such are the illusions with which we create idealized images of our world and ourselves.

Public attention to the Holocaust is long overdue, but such delusions betray a reality that, while not as uplifting as Hollywood’s version, is the only true history we have.

Testimony by victims and other witnesses to Nazism’s horror tells a story that starkly contradicts what we are accustomed to seeing on the screen. They speak not of heroic gestures, but of selfishness forced by conditions that put survival above other considerations. They speak not of courageous resistance, but of desperate acts prompted by the certainty of death. They speak not of the triumph of the human spirit, but of its defeat.

We do ourselves and future generations a grave disservice by putting a redemptive spin on history’s darkest hour. After liberation of the death camps, black and white did not turn to color, nor did the survivors link arms and walk over a hill singing Israeli songs, as occurred in “Schindler’s List.” Nor did young boys ride triumphantly atop Allied tanks, escaping miraculously from concentration camps to be joyfully reunited with their mothers, as in “Life Is Beautiful.” That’s entertainment, not history.

We love movies precisely because they reinforce our belief in the power of the human spirit. The Holocaust revealed an inhuman spirit immune to such wishful thinking, and to contort it into background for human-interest stories or epic sagas is to deny the specificity of its crimes.

No doubt we shy away from the horror of the Holocaust because its implications are too painful and incomprehensible to confront head-on. Without Holocaust movies, we are left with the naked Holocaust reality. That reality forces us to consider that human beings may not share a core of goodness, that something may be missing in our character, a crucial piece of the genetic puzzle without which we are capable of unthinkable behavior.

Rather than make room for such a prospect, we move the Holocaust from palpable memory to pulp metaphor, at every step blurring slightly more the line between reality and illusion, between history as it was and history as we would have preferred it to be, between life as a truly creative act and life as a derivative form of something we paid $8 to watch.

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Given the miserable track record of human behavior, it is understandable that the impulse to defend the decency of the human race surfaces periodically. But with every new cinematic interpolation, we stray further and further from the truth, prompting an insidious mind-set that says, “We learned so much and we’re so much better prepared now. The courage of those who resisted is truly inspiring. Those who survived dramatically demonstrate the will to live, they are heroes . . .”--and on and on, surrendering eloquently to the temptation to trivialize the enormity of the event and distance ourselves with vaulted sentiment from the truth of what occurred.

Judging by the war crimes that continue every day worldwide, we have learned nothing. Some day, film schools may require a course on ethics and social responsibility. Until then, the Holocaust will continue to be served up neatly packaged for popular consumption.