arts & entertainment
Nazi Stooge
or Well-Meaning Jew?
Shoah filmmaker turns his lens to a Judenrat leader.
Tom Tugend
I Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.
W
hen the French director
Claude Lanzmann completed
the editing of his 91/2-hour
epic documentary, Shoah, in 1985, he still
had stashed away nearly 11 hours of inter-
views with one man.
That man was Benjamin Murmelstein,
the last president of the Judenrat (Jewish
Council) in the Theresienstadt (Terezin)
ghetto, and the only Nazi-installed "Elder of
the Jews" not killed during the Holocaust.
Lanzmann, now 88, has compressed
those interviews, conducted in 1975, into
the more-than-31/2 hour documentary The
Last of the Unjust. The film reveals a then-
70-year-old man, who, in Lanzmann's esti-
mation, was highly intelligent, ironic, didn't
lie, was hard both on others and on himself,
and who was blessed with total recall.
Murmelstein also displayed a sardonic
wit, upending the title of Andre Schwarz-
Bart's novel The Last of the Just into the
self-designated "Last of the Unjust:' which
Lanzmann has adopted as the title for his
film.
The roles played by the Elders of the
Jews in the Nazi-controlled ghettos of Lvov,
Warsaw, Vilna and Lodz are still the stuff of
debates, books and plays. Were these men
stooges who did the Nazis' dirty work to
save their skins and to allow them to enjoy
the illusion of power? Or were they brave,
Jews
well-meaning men who sacrificed them-
selves in the hope of saving at least some of
their fellow Jews?
Murmelstein, like most humans, comes
across as a mixture of motives, hopes and
ambitions, though apparently more intel-
ligent and self-aware than other ghetto
leaders.
A Viennese rabbi and deputy to the
Jewish community president, Murmelstein
first met Adolf Eichmann in 1938, after the
Nazi takeover of Austria.
Eichmann ordered Murmelstein to
organize the forced emigration of Austrian
Jews, and even his detractors acknowledge
Murmelstein's role in helping more than
120,000 of Austria's 200,000 Jews flee the
country.
Over the next seven years, until the end
of the war, the Viennese rabbi and the Nazi
Holocaust organizer met and sparred again
and again, and, arguably, Murmelstein got
to know Eichmann better than any other
Jewish leader.
As such, Murmelstein thoroughly demol-
ishes philosopher Hannah Arendt's portrait
of Eichmann as a mere bureaucrat carrying
out orders and the personification of "the
banality of evil."
In reality, Murmelstein testifies,
Eichmann was a "demon:' and a thoroughly
corrupt one at that, who was also a fanati-
cal and violent anti-Semite, participating
directly in the burning of Vienna's syna-
gogues during Kristallnacht.
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
TV Notes
There are so many ways these days
to catch up with an already aired
TV show (DVR, On Demand, encore
showings, online) that a post-facto
heads-up usually isn't too late to let
you know about it.
Maybe you weren't aware that
Amy Schumer, 32, can be seen in
new episodes of her hit Comedy
Central show Inside Amy Schumer
(new episodes at 10:30 p.m.
Tuesdays), which began its second
season earlier this
month.
There are longer
sketches this sea-
son, and Schumer
has some well-
known guest stars,
including Rachel
Schumer
Dratch, 48; Zach
60
April 24 • 2014
Braff, 38; and Josh Charles, 42.
Obviously, Charles has a TV life
after the recent shocking death of
his character, Will Gardner, on CBS's
The Good Wife.
Schumer was a guest star on
the second episode (first aired
on Sunday, April 20) of the new
Comedy Central series hosted by
Dave Attell, 49.
Comedy Central Underground with
Dave Attell, with an eight-episode
arc, airs at 1 a.m. Sunday mornings
and features three or four comedian
guests per episode who can perform
a virtually uncensored stand-up
act. Expect most of
them, like Attell, to
be quite graphic.
The Showtime
series
Californication has
never shied away
from graphic con-
Duchovny
tent. The seventh
Murmelstein lambasts Eichmann's 1961
trial in Jerusalem as "a poor trial run by
ignorant people and approvingly quotes
a newspaper critic on "the banality of Mrs.
Arendt's own conclusions."
While obviously trying to cast his own
role as ghetto "Elder" in as favorable a light
as possible, Murmelstein, under sharp
questioning, acknowledges his own short-
comings.
He owns up to enjoying a sense of power
and, oddly, even of adventure, as well as to
his reputation among his Jewish "subjects"
as tough and mean.
But, mainly, he sees himself as a prag-
matist among the self-deluded, noting
that "if a surgeon starts crying during an
operation, the patient dies."
In general, he holds a high opinion of
his importance, arguing that "I had to save
myself to save the ghetto."
After the war, Murmelstein, who held a
diplomatic passport from the International
Committee of the Red Cross, easily could
have fled Europe. Instead, he chose to
remain in Czechoslovakia and stand trial
on allegations of collaborating with the
Nazis. After 18 months in prison, he was
acquitted of all charges. He died in Rome
in 1989, at 84.
The Last of the Unjust is, above all, a
fascinating examination of the human
condition in extremis, especially in cling-
ing to hope when every escape seems
barred.
and final season of this comedy-
drama about a semi-out-of-control
writer (played by David Duchvony,
53) began on April 13 (new episodes
at 9:30 p.m. Sundays), and runs
through June.
Three of the main Californication
supporting characters are played by
Jewish actors: Pamela Adlon, 47;
Stephen Tobolowsky, 62; and Evan
Handler, 53. The romantic triangle
that has linked these actors' char-
acters continues this season.
Duchovny, by the way, is already
set to start filming a 13-part
NBC series called Aquarius. The
time period is the late '60s, and
Duchovny plays a cop who becomes
aware of the Manson gang before
its members became infamous.
The new, 10-episode FX cable
series Fargo, based loosely on
brothers Ethan (56) and Joel (59)
Coen's Oscar-winning film of the
same name, premiered on April 15
Claude Lanzmann thttra . p
station outside of TerezWi;:,..
For example, when Eichmann and
the Nazi propaganda initially painted
Theresienstadt as a lovely spa that lucky
Jews could enjoy if they turned over all
their money to the "Eichmann Fund:'
40,000 elderly Jews eagerly signed on.
In a lengthy interview with Lanzmann
in the production notes for the film, the
director notes that even Murmelstein, who
had no illusions about Nazi cruelty and
trickery, "said he didn't know about the
gas chambers, and that's absolutely true.
"In Theresienstadt, the Jews were
afraid of deportation to the East, but they
couldn't imagine the reality of death in the
gas chambers:' Lanzmann noted in the
interview.
Lanzmann illustrates the desperate
longing for survival in the ghetto by quot-
ing one inmate, who said that "he who
wants to live is condemned to hope."
And in words all latter-day analysts
of Jewish action and inaction during the
Holocaust might take to heart, the film
concludes, "The Elders of the Jews can be
condemned, but they cannot be judged."
❑
The Detroit Film Theatre at the
Detroit Institute of Arts screens
Claude Lanzmann's The Last of the
Unjust at 1 p.m. Sunday, April 27.
$8.50/$6.50 students, seniors and
DIA members. (313) 833-4005; www.
dia.org .
(new episodes at 10 p.m. Tuesdays).
Billy Bob Thornton plays a manip-
ulative drifter who meets a small
town Minnesota
insurance salesman
and sets him on a
path of destruction.
Co-stars include
Adam Goldberg, 43,
and Joey King, 14.
Premiering on
Graynor
Thursday, April 24,
at 9:30 p.m. is the
CBS sitcom Bad Teacher. It, too, is
loosely based on a film of the same
name. Ari Graynor, 30, stars as a
former trophy wife who masquer-
ades as a teacher in order to find
another rich husband (her ex-hus-
band left her penniless).
The co-stars are talented: Kristin
Davis of Sex in the City, Detroit
native David Alan Grier and Sara
Gilbert, 39.
❑