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Film is slated on
Warsaw Ghetto.

Liev Schrieber,
front left, Robert
Carlyle, front
center, and Chris
Larkin, front
right, star in
"Hitler: The Rise
of Evil," a CBS
miniseries.

`Wartime' For Hitler

After revisions, a beleaguered CBS miniseries
gets thumbs-up from Jewish leaders.

After previewing tapes of the film, a
half-dozen Holocaust scholars and
prominent rabbis generally have given
it their approval.
Some of the turnaround can be cred-
ited to an entirely new script and com-
plete revision of the original project,
starting with the metamorphosis of the
title from Young Hitler to Hitler: The

TOM TUGEND

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

here were nights, acknowl-
edges Leslie Moonves, pres-
ident and CEO of CBS
Television, "when I lay in
bed, looking up at the ceiling and ask-
ing myself, 'Is this the right thing to
do? Will it open old wounds? Are we
creating more anti- Semitism?'"
Moonves had good cause for
sleepless introspection. Since
announcing last July that CBS
would air a four-hour, prime time
miniseries on the early life of Adolf
Hitler, media critics and Jewish
spokesmen had had a field day.
They feared that the early Hitler
would be "humanized" into a sympa-
thetic figure as an abused child and
misunderstood artist or as a German
"Rocky" who overcame tremendous
odds. Some even feared the film
might trigger pogrom-like outbursts.
Moonves, who lost much of his
grandparents' family in Poland during
the Holocaust, even took flak from his
own relatives.
Now, with Hitler: The Rise of Evil
broadcasting May 18 and May 20 dur-
ing the ratings sweeps period, the CBS
chief is breathing easier.

5/16
2003

98

Pho ro by Caro line Mardon/CBS

Los Angeles

In its final form, the film briefly
touches on young Hitler's brutal and
domineering father, his troubled ado-
lescence, his rootless existence in
Vienna as a failed artist and his enthu-
siastic soldiering in World War I.
But the vast bulk of the film deals
with Hitler's career from a Munich
beer-hall orator in 1920, through his
political machinations within
the Nazi Party and against the
Weimar Republic, ending in
1934 with the consolidation of
state power in his hands.
An epilogue summarizes, in
stark statistics and pictures, the
utter devastation Hitler
wrought on Europe and the
Jewish people.
"I think any fears in the
Jewish community that the
film would glorify Hitler have
been allayed," noted
Holocaust scholar Michael
Liev Schrieber and Juliannna Margulies portray
Berenbaum
said. "It success-
Ernst and Helene Hanfstaengl, an aristocratic
fully
narrates
Hitler's rise to
married couple at odds over their support of Hitler.
power and shows clearly how
those who tried to manipulate
Early Years, Hitler, Hitler: The Origin of him were instead manipulated by him.
"Historians may have some trouble
Evil and finally to the present title.
with interpretation, as they always do,
The earlier critical volleys, and
and with some composite figures, but
advice from Jewish leaders consulted
in general the film deals well with a
by the producers, apparently gave a
part of Hitler's life that people need to
substantial push to the revisions.

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein
will direct a film about the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Weinstein, who heads Miramax
Films in New York, told the New
York Post that he plans to direct a
feature film about the true story
of 120 Jewish resistance fighters
in the Warsaw Ghetto who bat-
tled the Nazis from a bunker
underneath 18 Mila Street.
Mordechai Anielewicz led the
fighters, who battled the Nazis for
some three weeks before many
were killed or committed suicide.
Leon Uris's fictional 1961 account
of the uprising, Mila 18, became a
best-seller.
"Unlike most Holocaust
movies, it's not about Jews taking
bleep," Weinstein told the Post.
"It's about Jews giving bleep."
A Miramax spokesman could not
be, reached to discuss details of the
production or a release date.

-- Jewish Telegraphic Agency

know," said Berenbaum, director of
the Sigi Ziering Institute for the Study
of Ethics and the Holocaust at the
University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
Abraham Foxman, national director
of the Anti-Defamation League, also
applauded the film. "It delivers a very
powerful message, especially to young
people, about how many times Hitler
could have been stopped in the early
years, how potent evil is and how frag-
ile democracy is," he said.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and
dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
praised the film and acknowledged that
his earlier fears about the project had
been unjustified. However, he said he
would have liked to see a more substan-
tial Jewish character in the series, and
strongly urged a sequel that would take
the Hitler story to its end in 1945.
"There are now youngsters who
know nothing about World War II
and the Holocaust, who didn't see
Schindler List, and who need to
know," Hier said.
All the experts cited gave much of
the credit for the film's effectiveness to
Scottish actor Robert Carlyle, whose
portrayal of Hitler is "frighteningly
brilliant," Foxman said.
One dissenting view came from phi-
losophy professor John Roth, director
of the newly formed Center for the