Arts Entertainment

Mixed Media

New

Reviews

Daring Diplomats

During the darkest days of the
Holocaust, 63 diplomats from 24
countries risked their careers, and in
some cases their lives, by issuing unau-
thorized visas and protective letters to
save an estimated 200,000 Jews.
The deeds of four of these brave
envoys are honored in the documen-
tary film Diplomats for the Damned, to
air over U.S. cable's History Channel
on Nov. 26 at 10 p.m.
The rescuers were not highly placed
ambassadors and plenipotentiaries, but
middle-level consuls and attaches, who
had every incentive to play it safe and
follow orders from above.
Chronicled in the documentary are
American Hiram Bingham, Aristides
de Sousa Mendes of Portugal, Charles
Lutz of Switzerland and Georg
Ferdinand Duckwitz of Germany.
As U.S. vice consul in Marseilles,
France, in 1940, Bingham defied
orders and issued safe passes, letters of
transit and falsified visas to save some
2,000 Jews — among them artists like
Marc Chagall and Max Ernst.
Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese con-
sul general in Bordeaux during the fate-
fill month of June 1940, when France
fell and refugees desperately sought to
escape the advancing Nazi army.
Against direct orders from Lisbon,
Sousa Mendes not only issued 10,000
visas to Jews and 20,000 to others, but
personally helped hundreds of Jewish
refugees through a checkpoint at the
French-Spanish border. For his courage,
Sousa Mendes, the father of 13, was
dismissed by his government, lost all
his property and died in poverty.
Lutz was the consul for Switzerland
in Budapest during the last two years
of the war. He invented the "protective
letter" for Jews — later adopted by
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg
— and set up a string of 76 "safe
houses." He even managed to channel
10,000 Jewish children to Palestine.
Jewish relief agencies estimate that
he saved as many as 62,000 lives.
While the American, Portuguese and
Swiss diplomats paid for their humani-
tarianism with stunted careers,
Duckwitz, a Nazi Party member, bet
his life in saving Denmark's Jewry.
As trade attache at the German

11/24
2000

92

Leonard Bernstein's "Kaddish" will be played at the site of a Nazi rally in
Nuremberg, Germany.

embassy in Copenhagen, he learned
that the Nazis planned to deport the
country's 7,000 Jews to death camps on
Rosh Hashanah 1943. He first flew to
Berlin to try, unsuccessfully, to change
his government's mind, then to Sweden
to arrange safe haven for the refugees.
He later tipped off the Danish under-
ground, which ferried the Jews to safety.
Fittingly, he was the one rescuer to
benefit from his deeds when the post-
war German government appointed
him ambassador to Denmark.
In a profession known more for
bureaucratic punctiliousness than civil
courage, these diplomats showed that
one brave man can make a profound
difference.
Second, Sousa Mendes, a deeply
religious Catholic, and Bingham and
Lutz, equally devout Protestants, were
willing to act on their faith when most
of Christian Europe turned its back on
the continent's Jews. As the Portuguese
envoy put it, "I would rather be with
God against man than with man
against God."
The impact of Diplomats for the
Damned will not end with the History
Channel broadcast. On the initiative
of the Committee for Righteous
Deeds, founded by Rabbi David
Baron of Temple Shalom for the Arts
in Beverly Hills, Calif., special fund-
raising screenings will be held in vari-
ous cities.

The proceeds will go toward buying
thousands of videocassettes of
Diplomats, complemented by teaching
guides for public and private schools.
The Los Angeles premiere was held
last month, and future events are
planned for Chicago, Washington,
New York, Montreal and Geneva.

— Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Diplomats for the Damned airs 10
p.m. Sunday, Nov. 26, on the
History Channel.

Raising Their Voices

Seven choirs from Israel, Canada
and the United States will soon per-
form Leonard Bernstein's Kaddish
symphony on the site in Nuremberg,
Germany, where Hitler rallied his
storm troopers in the 1930s.
The Nov. 25 and 26 concerts in
Meistersinger Hall will commemorate
three November anniversaries: the
10th anniversary of Bernstein's death,
the 62nd anniversary of the
Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany,
and the 950th anniversary of the
founding of Nuremberg.
Presented under the title "Sounds of
Healing," the concert was conceived as

both a multinational artistic collabora-
tion and a mission of reconciliation,
says Los Angeles conductor and com-
poser Nick Strimple, who was instru-
mental in organizing the event.
"The people of Nuremberg I've met,
especially the younger ones, are deeply
committed that their city will not be
known forever just as the site of Nazi
rallies, anti-Jewish laws and war-crime
trials," says Strimple.
When he visited the city, Strimple, a
Presbyterian, stopped at the German
National Museum, on whose granite
columns are chiseled a declaration of
human rights in many languages.
"The first language, at the very top,
is Hebrew," he says.
Joining the Nuremberg Symphony
Orchestra in the two concerts, which
will open with Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony, will be the Tel Aviv Chamber
Choir and the Efroni Children's Choir,
the latter based near Haifa.
"It is arguably one of the best youth
choirs in the world," says Strimple.
Also joining in Bernstein's Kaddish,
which premiered in 1964 in Israel, will
be the Toronto Jewish Chamber
Choir, and four choral groups from
Los Angeles.
The massed choirs also performed at
the Musica Judaica Festival in Prague
on Nov. 20, presenting selections of
Jewish choral music from the
Renaissance to the present.
Nuremberg's Jewish community,
900 strong and growing, also hosted a
concert on Nov. 23, featuring Yiddish
and Holocaust-themed music.
The entire Nuremberg experience,
including rehearsals, the concerts and
a view of the city's past will be docu-
mented in a 90-minute television and
educational film by Oscar-winner
Delbert Mann.

— Tom Tugend
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Foster's Folly?

The small but vocal group of demon-
strators rallied outside Paramount
Pictures in Hollywood this month
wielded signs and chanted slogans such
as "Jodie Foster wants to glorify a Nazi"
and "Stop Jodie's project now"
They were protesting a proposed
biopic of Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's