History’s battlefields

There are many films the delve into crimes of obedience

In order to kill in combat or on a large scale requires the perpetrator to become desensitized and to objectify or dehumanize their victim. This often results in what military ethicists and social psychologists call “crimes of obedience.”

This is as true for those who carried out the Shoah (Holocaust), pilots who bombed civilian cities like Warsaw, Coventry, Dresden, or Hiroshima, fought the “war without mercy” in the Pacific, participated in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, or shoot Palestinian teenagers. “Crimes of obedience” are all too common throughout military history.

Films dealing with the Shoah (“catastrophe”), popularly called the Holocaust (“burnt offering”), about the systematic extermination of European Jews, are a distinct category of Second World War films. During the that war, 45 million people were killed, including 20 to 25 million Soviets and 15 million Chinese; about six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. The Germans also systematically killed other groups including Gypsies (Roma), Red Army officers, trade unionists, homosexuals, political dissidents, and resistance fighters.

The best film on this subject is Claude Lanzmann’s mindnumbing nine-hour documentary, Shoah (1985). The film, with its mono-chromatic cinematography, presents the assembly-line killing machine that existed in the death camps. According to British historian Sir Richard J. Evans, “The majority of Jewish victims of Nazi mass murder were not killed in the camps; they were shot, starved to death, or left to die of diseases…” (NYRB, July 9, 2015). The film created something of a backlash because it failed to mention the many Poles who rescued Jews, or the 3.5 million Gentile Poles killed by the Germans.

Four films are especially sensitive and interesting in their treatment of the Shoah, and avoid promoting guilt or victimhood. First is Gyongyossy’s poignant black and white film, The Revolt of Job (1983) that takes place in Hungary in 1943. This touching story deals with an elderly Jewish couple, peasants, who adopt a young Gentile orphan and bring him up as Jewish. When they are rounded up by the Germans they then tell him to revert to his Christian status to save himself. The Quarrel (1991) with Saul Rubinek is a Canadian production that takes place in Montreal immediately after the Second World War and deals with the long-standing conflict between religious and ethnic Jewish identity symbolized by two childhood friends from the same shtetl (village). One has become a secular writer, while his friend is an Orthodox rabbi. They argue about why they survived. Studies suggest that two types of people survived the death camps: those who were extremely religious or those who were devoutly secular. The third film is a little known television play, God on Trial (2008), about a rabbinical trial in Auschwitz where God was found guilty of breaking His Covenant with the Jewish people. This is one of three actual trials.

Lastly, the French black and white documentary by Pierre Sauvage, Weapons of the Spirit - Le Chambon (1989) tells the inspirational story of how the Huguenots (Protestants) in a small, rural French town in the south successfully hid Jews from the Germans and the Vichy government for the duration of the war. In contrast to these movies is Ramati’s film, And the Violins Stopped Playing - A Story of the Gypsy Holocaust (1988), based on his novel, about the experiences of a Roma family during the Second World War. Most historians and the Israeli government now recognize the Gypsy (Roma) Holocaust. War is also a theme in art and music, as well as cinema. Goya’s great anti-war portfolio, “The Disasters of War” (1810-20) and Picasso’s iconic painting, Guernica (1937), has universal resonance. Those wanting solace and relief from war – historical and contemporary – are invited to listen to Gorecki’s profoundly moving Symphony No. 3, “The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” (1976), with its soulful lamentations about wartime suffering. It is almost enough to make me a philosophical pacifist. Richard Deaton, Ph.D., LL.B., taught Military Ethics and Law at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He lives in Stanley Bridge, P.E.I.