The American Jewish Story through Cinema (The Jewish History, Life, and Culture) by Eric A. Goldman

Author:Eric A. Goldman [Goldman, Eric A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

American soldiers liberate the concentration camp.

Captain Green (in foreground) breaks open the barracks door to discover malnourished surviving concentration camp inmates. His only words are, “My God!” Arthur Franz plays Green. © 20th Century-Fox. 20th Century Fox Pictures/Photofest.

AMERICAN LIBERATION AND GUARANTEES

Christian’s visit to the camp in the film is followed by a new sequence in which the American platoon liberates the camp. The camera pans from Christian walking away into the field to American soldiers on the road just about to reach the camp, as drums begin to beat and military marching music is heard. When the crew was filming in Strasbourg, in Alsace province, they came across a concentration camp at Struthof, in the town of Schirmeck.70 By 1957 the camp, which was the only Nazi extermination camp on French soil,71 had become a tourist attraction, and Dmytryk felt that it would be perfect to use. There was double barbed-wire fencing and “20-foot-high, tarred telephone poles, double in depth and copiously strung with barbed wire.”72 It looked perfect. As they began filming, they learned that those running the site had actually added additional fencing and telephone poles to make it look even more authentic. The tourists wanted “greater realism” to make the site look more scary, more ominous, which worked well for the film.

The scene begins with a Nazi flag being lowered from a flagpole and Ackerman and Whitacre’s platoon entering the camp, with gallows in the foreground. Soldiers surround one of the barracks. Captain Green, their commander, to make sure that there is no resistance from German soldiers within, shoots a round of bullets with his machine gun and opens the door. All the while, there is music of action and imminent victory. Then Green, ready to fire on any German who might be hiding inside, comes across bunks three-high in a room full of male inmates scattered across the room, on the floor, and stuffed into bunks. The music turns shrill as we see a walking skeleton coming toward Green, at which point Green’s only words are “My God!” The visual is reminiscent of the classic photograph in which inmate Elie Wiesel lies among emaciated prisoners at Buchenwald. It is ghastly and powerful. To my knowledge, this was the first visual of its kind fashioned for American narrative cinema. Ironically, several of the extras in the scene who played inmates had themselves been prisoners in that same camp.73

The next scene pulls together all of the elements of the film and also brings the three protagonists together for the first and only time. Following the liberation scene, we again meet Captain Green, now overseeing the necessary actions needed at the camp. The Americans are carting away the dead, treating those near death, and feeding and caring for the weak and hungry. We were first introduced to Green as the lieutenant who showed sensitivity to a bruised Ackerman, who had been fighting with his fellow soldiers. In fact, Green would later replace the anti-Semitic Captain Colclough, who goes on to face charges for his anti-Semitism and failure to act and protect Ackerman.

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