Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s set directions may have led to killing of Polish Jews
New documentary shows propagandist’s lifelong commitment to Nazi cause, casting doubt on her denial of knowledge of atrocities which enabled her rehabilitation in postwar Germany
Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl’s set directions may have led to the killing of Jews, implicating her in a massacre in south-central Poland’s Końskie early in World War II, a new documentary argues.
Riefenstahl, who died in 2003 aged 101, had long denied knowledge of Nazi atrocities, and her image was largely rehabilitated in postwar Germany. However, among other evidence of her lifelong Nazi sympathies, The Guardian reported Wednesday that the creators of the documentary “Riefenstahl” found in the filmmaker’s archives a letter from 1952 detailing her part in the Końskie massacre.
In the letter to the director’s ex-husband — a major in the Nazis’ paramilitary wing — a lower-ranking officer refers to a military report on the massacre. According to the officer, “probably ahead of filming a scene on the marketplace,” Riefenstahl urged that “the Jews” be “removed” from the set. When she was ignored, “it ended up sounding like this: ‘Get rid of the Jews!’”
“Prompted by this remark,” says the letter, “some of the Polish Jews attempted to flee and the shots were fired.”
The documentary, written and directed by Andres Veiel, is the first to be given full access to Riefenstahl’s 700-box archive — complete with 30 hours of recorded conversations with the public, including former Nazis — which historians say she heavily edited. According to the Guardian, the film recounts how Riefenstahl earned the public’s praise for appearing on talk shows and claiming her “wounds have still not healed” from discovering the crimes of her beloved Hitler.
In a phone conversation with her fellow rehabilitated Nazi, Hitler’s architecture and armaments minister Albert Speer, Riefenstahl complains, “Every time I go on TV they claim I share the blame [for] all the atrocities, the concentration camps.”
“Don’t let the swine bring you down,” wrote a Holocaust denier to Riefenstahl.
In one letter, according to the Guardian, Riefenstahl mourns her “murdered ideals” as she openly regrets the end of the Nazi era.
When an unidentified caller said the “morality, decency and virtue” of the Nazi era would be back, Riefenstahl responded: “Yes, the German people are predestined for that.”
In her calendar, Riefenstahl had reportedly scribbled: “Vote NPD” — Germany’s National Democratic Party, which succeeded the Nazi party.
Riefenstahl caught the attention of Hitler, who prided himself on being an artist, with her 1932 silent film “Das blaue Licht” (The Blue Light). At his 1934 Nuremberg rally, Riefenstahl shot “Triumph of the Will,” considered one of the most masterful propaganda films of all time, for which Hitler provided her with virtually unlimited resources.
Two years later, she documented the 1936 Munich Olympics in the film “Olympia” — an ode to the Nazi body aesthetic, in which she pioneered the method of placing a camera on a reel.
Filmmaker Willy Zielke, who collaborated with her on the prologue of “Olympia,” was admitted to a psychiatric unit after the filming, and subsequently sterilized under Nazi law. Veiel, the documentary filmmaker, told The Guardian that Riefenstahl knew of Zielke’s fate and failed to intervene on his behalf.
Riefensthal continued producing Nazi propaganda throughout World War II, including documenting Hitler’s victory parade through Warsaw, shortly after the Końskie massacre. After the war, she was detained by the Allies and subject to denazification, but was determined to have been only a “fellow traveler” of the Nazis and not herself a war criminal.
She lived out the rest of her days in a lakeside villa in Pöcking, near Munich, and continued working in cinematography. Her reputation was rehabilitated to such an extent that she was commissioned to photograph the 1972 Munich Olympics — 36 years after her tribute to Nazi athletics — and was a guest of honor at the Quebec Games four years later.
Never officially a member of the Nazi party, Riefenstahl won some 50 libel suits against people who accused her of participation in Nazi crimes.
The documentary “Riefenstahl” will debut at the Venice Film Festival, which began Wednesday and will continue through next week. The film’s creators told The Guardian that they “expect a backlash” given the high regard that the Nazi propagandist still enjoys in the film world.
