The Legacy of World War II in European Arthouse Cinema by Samm Deighan;

Author:Samm Deighan;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Published: 2021-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

The elegant, tragic Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) hovers like a spectral presence throughout the film (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Laura Film/Tango Film/Rialto Film, 1982).

In addition to Voss’s inability to transcend her Nazi past, the film’s emphasis on World War II trauma is highlighted by an old Jewish couple, antique dealers and Holocaust survivors also being treated by Dr. Katz for “nervous disorders.” They are survivors of the Nazi death camp Treblinka and welcome the relief of morphine from constant emotional pain. This suggestion that trauma is a wound healed only by death is constant throughout the film and Fassbinder’s other works—particularly Fox and His Friends and In a Year with 13 Moons—share this abiding sense of personal misery and the desire for oblivion.

It is also worth questioning if Fassbinder’s selection of Treblinka was intentional. In a Year with 13 Moons introduces Saitz as a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp located near Hanover (about three hours east of Berlin). It was used primarily for labor or transit and lacked gas chambers or gas vans; yet of the roughly 120,000 people who passed through the camp, around 50,000 were killed. Despite this staggering statistic, it maintained the reputation of being one of the easier camps to survive. Treblinka, on the other hand, located in ­Nazi-occupied Poland, was the site of mass exterminations organized by Operation Reinhard, the Nazi code name for the planned annihilation of Jews in the Generalgouvernement (a large territory in occupied Poland and Ukraine). Organized by Reinhard Heydrich, this elaborate plan included the construction of previously mentioned death camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, and later, Majdanek.

In the three years that it was open, nearly a million people were killed at Treblinka, making this the location of the second highest number of Holocaust deaths next to Auschwitz. But unlike Auschwitz, the Germans were prepared for the arrival of Soviet soldiers and the camp was destroyed. An attempt was made to hide all evidence of genocide. Treblinka was one of the camps to experience an uprising and as a result, roughly 70 people—out of nearly a million—survived. Only a few of those made it past the war years and many devoted the rest of their lives to telling their story to the world. Examples include survivor Hershl Sperling, who gave testimony but eventually committed suicide, as did another survivor, author Richard Glazar. Sculptor Samuel Willenberg, is the rare example of a Treblinka survivor who also took part in the Warsaw Uprising, lived into his 90s and passed away in 2016.

This intersection between drug overdose, survivor guilt, depression, loneliness, and suicide that can be found in Veronika Voss—as well as Fox and His Friends and In a Year with 13 Moons—encompasses main characters who are all tired, in pain, and, above all, ready to die. Before Veronika Voss, Fassbinder’s most spectacular image of death was the eerie, blue subway station where Fox lays down to die in Fox and His Friends. Here, it is surpassed by the image of Veronika’s

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