S
stumbler
Guest
by STEVEN D. GREYDANUS
Register Film Critic
NEW YORK— German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play The Deputy helped kick off a smear campaign against Pope Pius XII that has lasted some 40 years. It’s only recently that new evidence has shown the charge of Pius’ “silence” about the Nazi extermination of the Jews to be a myth.
Now, another dramatic presentation by a German offers a welcome larger perspective, pointing out the cost in human lives from Nazi reprisals to Church protests.
Director Volker Schlöndorff’s award-winning film The Ninth Day was inspired by a real-life incident from the prison diary of Abbé Jean Bernard, a survivor of the infamous “priest block” at the Dachau concentration camp. The film opened in limited release in the United States May 27 and is expanding to other markets in coming weeks.
In an unusual move, the Nazis briefly released Father Bernard, allowing him to see his family and talk to his bishop. According to the director, the priest alludes in his diary to resisting the influence of a Nazi officer who tried to pressure him in some way, but doesn’t reveal what the interviews were about. The film speculates that the Nazis may have wanted the priest to persuade his bishop to collaborate.
The movie also depicts the bishop reading the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge and observing darkly that all the Pope’s predictions regarding Nazism have come true.
In a striking exchange regarding the Pope’s “silence,” the bishop cites the case of the bishops of the Netherlands, where a letter of protest over Nazi persecution of the Jews resulted in the additional arrests of 40,000 Jewish converts to Catholicism. What would the cost be, the bishop asks, of a papal protest? 300,000? 400,000?
Commenting on the incident in the Netherlands, director Schlöndorff said, “What happened there is that the Nazis first arrested and deported the Jews of, how I should say, Mosaic faith. The [Dutch bishops] protested that, upon which the Nazis also arrested and deported the Jews who had converted [to Catholicism]. … So that is one of the arguments that is always brought forward why [Pius XII] didn’t interfere more forcefully.”
At the same time, Schlöndorff stressed that The Ninth Day is primarily concerned with the priest’s dilemma, not the matter of Pius XII, which he calls “a footnote” in the film.
“Rightly or wrongly, there’s been so much criticism about the attitude of the Church,” Schlöndorff said. “And one shouldn’t forget that there were thousands of [Catholic] individuals who behaved in the most decent way one could wish for. And I literally wanted to build a monument to those unknown and unsung heroes.”
Footnote or not, the film’s inclusion of a positive perspective on the Church’s role in the war years has some critics crying foul. . . .
Full article
Register Film Critic
NEW YORK— German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play The Deputy helped kick off a smear campaign against Pope Pius XII that has lasted some 40 years. It’s only recently that new evidence has shown the charge of Pius’ “silence” about the Nazi extermination of the Jews to be a myth.
Now, another dramatic presentation by a German offers a welcome larger perspective, pointing out the cost in human lives from Nazi reprisals to Church protests.
Director Volker Schlöndorff’s award-winning film The Ninth Day was inspired by a real-life incident from the prison diary of Abbé Jean Bernard, a survivor of the infamous “priest block” at the Dachau concentration camp. The film opened in limited release in the United States May 27 and is expanding to other markets in coming weeks.
In an unusual move, the Nazis briefly released Father Bernard, allowing him to see his family and talk to his bishop. According to the director, the priest alludes in his diary to resisting the influence of a Nazi officer who tried to pressure him in some way, but doesn’t reveal what the interviews were about. The film speculates that the Nazis may have wanted the priest to persuade his bishop to collaborate.
The movie also depicts the bishop reading the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge and observing darkly that all the Pope’s predictions regarding Nazism have come true.
In a striking exchange regarding the Pope’s “silence,” the bishop cites the case of the bishops of the Netherlands, where a letter of protest over Nazi persecution of the Jews resulted in the additional arrests of 40,000 Jewish converts to Catholicism. What would the cost be, the bishop asks, of a papal protest? 300,000? 400,000?
Commenting on the incident in the Netherlands, director Schlöndorff said, “What happened there is that the Nazis first arrested and deported the Jews of, how I should say, Mosaic faith. The [Dutch bishops] protested that, upon which the Nazis also arrested and deported the Jews who had converted [to Catholicism]. … So that is one of the arguments that is always brought forward why [Pius XII] didn’t interfere more forcefully.”
At the same time, Schlöndorff stressed that The Ninth Day is primarily concerned with the priest’s dilemma, not the matter of Pius XII, which he calls “a footnote” in the film.
“Rightly or wrongly, there’s been so much criticism about the attitude of the Church,” Schlöndorff said. “And one shouldn’t forget that there were thousands of [Catholic] individuals who behaved in the most decent way one could wish for. And I literally wanted to build a monument to those unknown and unsung heroes.”
Footnote or not, the film’s inclusion of a positive perspective on the Church’s role in the war years has some critics crying foul. . . .
Full article