Denial (2016)
It is said that the Holocaust is a sensitive word. Firstly, the term has been hijacked only to denote one event, to what happened in Auschwitz and the many concentration camps during WW2 to the 6 million Jews there. True, there were many other equally bad, if not worse, atrocities were done by Man to his fellow kind; this event always took centre stage. Perhaps, Hollywood helped to sell this story too. After all, many of the pioneers of the silver screen were disgruntled Jews who themselves were movie doyens who escaped Hitler's tyranny to settle in America.
Human history is marred with many bloodbath events and senseless deaths. What comes to mind are The Indian Partition, The Bengal Famine, death under the Stalin regime, Russian deaths in WW2, Rape of Nanking, hunger deaths during the Cultural Revolution in China, Communist witch-hunt in Indonesia, the Armenian genocide and the World Wars, which may have been actually started off by the Russian Revolution. War is a bloody event and brings out the worst in mankind. So, to single out the Jewish Holocaust as the sole savagery to happen in our civilisation is as if it is the most singularly important in history is an overkill, so say the non-sympathisers. It is not to say that these events did not occur, but rather, too much romanticism and emotions are placed on it. These people who do not conform to the general train of thought are termed 'Holocaust Deniers' to mean that they do not acknowledge its occurrence!
This movie's crux is the real-life legal spat between an American Jewish Professor, Lipstadt, and a Nazi-Germany scholar, Irving. Irving sued Lipstadt for libel as she labelled him for being a Holocaust denier in her book. As the publisher of her book, Penguin, is British, Irving sued her in the English courts. In the English legal system, the burden of proof lies with the accused. Hence, it is up to her legal team to convince the judge for a favourable outcome whilst dodging pressures from the media, Holocaust survivors themselves and their pushy client.
If one were to follow the courts' proceedings, one would realise that the last thing that the legal system is trying to find out is the Truth and to mete justice. It has become a stage, like life itself, a place for people to seek publicity, to set precedence for the rest of society to use as a yardstick to follow and an avenue to apparently showcase their high culture to the world. On this stage, the actors, the histrionic performers act out their roles to create a shadow play and smokescreen to hoodwink the jury or the presiding judge to look at the case from their (the lawyers) own rose-tinted lenses. This can happen as things in life are not so straightforward. No one is either so bad or angelic. The truth is multilayered and can be viewed from many perspectives. It is the role of the directors of this stage to create the props, set the mood and sell their story.
The victors can then write the ensuing story any way they want!
(N.B. There is plenty of literature in cyberspace on the Holocaust, put up by its deniers. They question the validity of much of the evidence put forward by the sympathisers. They deny that there was systematic planning of the Jewish genocide. They posit that it was the usual atrocity of any war, and the planned gassing of people in Austwick is an exaggeration or even a blatant lie. They claim that there is no documented proof. The Jews, in rebuttal, reply that the pieces of evidence were destroyed by Hitler. The debate will never end.)
https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson
https://www.facebook.com/groups/riflerangeboy/
It is said that the Holocaust is a sensitive word. Firstly, the term has been hijacked only to denote one event, to what happened in Auschwitz and the many concentration camps during WW2 to the 6 million Jews there. True, there were many other equally bad, if not worse, atrocities were done by Man to his fellow kind; this event always took centre stage. Perhaps, Hollywood helped to sell this story too. After all, many of the pioneers of the silver screen were disgruntled Jews who themselves were movie doyens who escaped Hitler's tyranny to settle in America.
Human history is marred with many bloodbath events and senseless deaths. What comes to mind are The Indian Partition, The Bengal Famine, death under the Stalin regime, Russian deaths in WW2, Rape of Nanking, hunger deaths during the Cultural Revolution in China, Communist witch-hunt in Indonesia, the Armenian genocide and the World Wars, which may have been actually started off by the Russian Revolution. War is a bloody event and brings out the worst in mankind. So, to single out the Jewish Holocaust as the sole savagery to happen in our civilisation is as if it is the most singularly important in history is an overkill, so say the non-sympathisers. It is not to say that these events did not occur, but rather, too much romanticism and emotions are placed on it. These people who do not conform to the general train of thought are termed 'Holocaust Deniers' to mean that they do not acknowledge its occurrence!
This movie's crux is the real-life legal spat between an American Jewish Professor, Lipstadt, and a Nazi-Germany scholar, Irving. Irving sued Lipstadt for libel as she labelled him for being a Holocaust denier in her book. As the publisher of her book, Penguin, is British, Irving sued her in the English courts. In the English legal system, the burden of proof lies with the accused. Hence, it is up to her legal team to convince the judge for a favourable outcome whilst dodging pressures from the media, Holocaust survivors themselves and their pushy client.
If one were to follow the courts' proceedings, one would realise that the last thing that the legal system is trying to find out is the Truth and to mete justice. It has become a stage, like life itself, a place for people to seek publicity, to set precedence for the rest of society to use as a yardstick to follow and an avenue to apparently showcase their high culture to the world. On this stage, the actors, the histrionic performers act out their roles to create a shadow play and smokescreen to hoodwink the jury or the presiding judge to look at the case from their (the lawyers) own rose-tinted lenses. This can happen as things in life are not so straightforward. No one is either so bad or angelic. The truth is multilayered and can be viewed from many perspectives. It is the role of the directors of this stage to create the props, set the mood and sell their story.
The victors can then write the ensuing story any way they want!
(N.B. There is plenty of literature in cyberspace on the Holocaust, put up by its deniers. They question the validity of much of the evidence put forward by the sympathisers. They deny that there was systematic planning of the Jewish genocide. They posit that it was the usual atrocity of any war, and the planned gassing of people in Austwick is an exaggeration or even a blatant lie. They claim that there is no documented proof. The Jews, in rebuttal, reply that the pieces of evidence were destroyed by Hitler. The debate will never end.)
https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Comments
Post a Comment