The aesthetic problems of rendering the holocaust on film are immense, verging on agonizing questions about God’s loving kindness and human responsibility. Even though one may never have heard of the holocaust, as many middle-aged Americans and their offspring have not, the event shadows our unconscious, haunting and shaping our individual and our collective being, making us unsure in the ambiguity of our inmost selves whether we most resemble murderer or victim. Meditation on the holocaust--and the event demands more than mere study--has much to tell us if we can but sustain our courage to ask the right questions. We must attend to its murmurs about the peculiar modern face of evil, and about God or his absence in history.
It is the manner of that attending and reflection that needs examination. It seems inevitable now that in the next few years the American public will be exposed to a plethora of films that have as their motive interest Nazism and its war against the Jews. A convergence of factors makes the time ripe for this flourishing.
First, humanity seems to have at its core a strain of curiosity, distorted and morbid as it often is, about humankind in extremis, humankind as sufferer of evil, or humankind as incarnation of evil. Ignorance of the facts, naiveté, and the partly morbid appeal of the subject matter make for a susceptible and eager audience.
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