Film about 1939 Nazi rally up for Oscar

A crowd of 20,000 gives the Nazi salute as swastikas flank a giant portrait of George Washington.

Unimaginable to most Americans, the pro-hitler rally that took place 80 years ago this week inside New York’s Madison Square Garden is the subject of a short documentary that’s up for an Oscar.

The seven-minute film shows Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the pro-nazi German American Bund, decrying “the Jewishcontrolled press” and demanding “a socially just, white, gentile-ruled United States.”

Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry said that after learning about the 1939 Bund rally, which he could barely believe had happened, he asked a researcher friend to help him locate archival footage of the Feb. 20, 1939, event.

“Once he pulled it all together and I saw it, I thought it was very surreal and frightening, and I wanted to find a way to make something of it,” Curry said.

Curry sees parallels to 2019, when Republican President Donald Trump calls news organizations enemies of the people and anti-jewish attacks are increasing. The anniversary of the rally comes as New York police report a 72 percent increase in hate crimes in the city over the past year, with antisemitic crimes making up almost two-thirds of the total of 55.

In “A Night at the Garden,” mounted police officers hold back protesters outside the Garden, about a mile north of the arena’s present-day location and where the marquee advertises “Pro American Rally” along with a New York Rangers hockey game the following night.“a Night at the Garden” is one of five films in contention for best documentary, short subject, at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony.