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But these same qualities can sometimes work to heighten impact; the unbe- lievable and the incom- prehensible, filtered through TV's machinery of mass ap- peal, can take on an im- mediacy that the gritty realism of documentaries can- not approach. lb listen to network officials at ABC, the marathon mini- series based on Herman Wouk's novel "War and Re- membrance" is the seminal retelling of the World War II story. In reality, the 30-hour series, to be shown in in- stallments beginning on Sun- day evening, reduces much of the war to a kind of extreme- ly long soap opera. But Herman Wouk had an underlying purpose to his modern version of "War and Peace." Wouk wanted to create an indelible impres- sion of the Holocaust in the minds of readers attracted by the book's adventure and romantic content. He ac- complished this feat by blen- ding a horrifyingly graphic and detailed account of the Nazi killing machine into the melodrama of his plot. The producers of "War and Remembrance" were true to this purpose. Amid a long- winded plot populated with cardboard characters, they have woven Holocaust im- agery that no viewer is like- ly to forget. The fact that these images have been cleaned up and Americanized to provide a frame of reference comprehensible to the mass audience only contributes to the awesome power of the show's account of the Holocaust. "War and Remembrance" tells the story of Pug Henry and his family. Henry, a naval officer, is conveniently singl- ed out by Franklin Roosevelt for special missions that place him at just about every im- portant event in the course of the war. What Henry misses, his equally active family catches. But nestled between the episodes involving the Henry C Visa, American Express, Mastercard, Diners Club • Free Gift Wrap • Cash Refunds 1 UP} IMa1 Down with a DOWN QUILT "FACTORY TO YOU &WNW' • Custom Made Down Quilts • Quilts & Pillow Remade, Renovated & Cleaned • Merino bol Mattress Pads • Down & Feather PMews • QM Covers (Duvets) • Custom Made to Order 5* 1910 ". TRAURIG'S QUILT & PILLOW SHOP ODWARD 547 .2660 22050 R40 1/00ALE MOINI.4111. WO* SAT. ICK104:00 men in battle and the women in assorted romances is a se- cond story — that of Natalie Henry and her uncle, Aaron Jastrow. Natalie is married to Pug Henry's youngest son, a submariner. Natalie and Aaron are caught in Italy as the war opens; their hair- raising attempts to escape Europe provide the mini- series' primary element of suspense. And their odyssey through Nazi Europe provides the backdrop for Aaron Jastrow's personal journey back to his Jewish roots, a theme that allows Wouk to come away from his graphic look at the Holocaust with a strong underlying optimism. In the book, Wouk was not reluctant to use somewhat implausible devices to lay out the immensity of the Final Solution. Natalie Henry's former boyfriend is a State Department employee who is given early evidence of the Nazi genocide; Jastrow's cousin, Berel, is a Polish Jew whose various escapes al- lowed Wouk to document the progressive madness of the Holocaust, from the first mass killings by Einsatzgruppen to the organized genocide of Auschwitz. And this last contrivance sets the stage for the series' nightmarish centerpiece — the long, painstaking se- quence documenting the death camp at Birkenau. The mini-series' raison de etre comes in the second in- stallment. Berel Jastrow, a slave laborer working on the construction of the camp at Auschwitz, witnesses one of the first gassings — a special "action" designed to demonstrate the camp's remarkable efficiency to the visiting Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler. What follows has a power that will leave few viewers unaffected. The cameras follow a trainload of special- ly selected Jews through their brief and horrifying stay at Auschwitz: the selection pro- cess, the undressing rooms, the desperate sprint to the death chambers, the shop talk among the German of- ficers about the problems of body disposal. The sequence was actually filmed at Auschwitz, parts of which were reconstructed for the shooting -- and the ordi- nariness of some of the scenes is juxtaposed against the overwhelming horror in ways that make the immensity of the Holocaust easier to grasp.