A new documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazis’ favorite filmmaker and leading propagandist, claims she was a direct witness to the murderous crimes of the Third Reich.
Riefenstahl’s film, to be screened at the Venice Film Festival at the end of August, says the propagandist praised the party and its aides until his death in 2003 at the age of 101, contradicting his insistence that he was not contracted. For the Nazi cause.
Written and directed by Andres Weill, the documentary is the first to gain full access to Riefenstahl’s estate. It provides new details about claims that the filmmaker witnessed one of the first massacres of Polish Jews during a brief stint as a war correspondent.
Riefenstahl, who followed Adolf Hitler to Poland at the start of World War II in September 1939, witnessed what happened in the town of Gonski in south-central Poland.
A 1952 letter found in his estate suggests that Riefenstahl may have been indirectly responsible for the deaths. A letter from a lower-ranking officer to her ex-husband, Peter Jacob, a major in the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary unit, refers to a military report on the massacre.
The letter states that Riefenstahl insisted that the „Jews” be „removed from there,” „presumably before filming a scene in the market place.”
When a lance corporal sent comments, the officer’s letter „ended up like this: 'Get rid of the Jews!'”. It added: „Incited by this opinion … some Polish Jews tried to flee and were fired upon.”
Weil said: „If this statement is true, then Riefenstahl’s movement played a role in the death of the Jews at Gonski.” At the very least, he added, „her feelings of guilt may explain her vehement denial of even being a witness to the crime”.
The documentary draws on approximately 30 hours of tape recordings of post-war telephone conversations with people, including former Nazis, who called on Riefenstahl to offer moral support. The Nazis. An unidentified caller said the „morality, decency and virtue” of the Nazi era would return, to which Riefenstahl replied: „Yes, the German people are destined for it.”
The recordings are accompanied by hundreds of hours of home video footage of Riefenstahl’s partner, Horst Kettner, who captured the comfortable family life at their beautiful lakeside villa in Pöcking, southwest of Munich.
Weil’s film recounts how she gained public acclaim after appearing on a late-night chat show in 1976 alongside Elfriede Kretschmer, a former member of the Workers’ Anti-Nazi Movement. Riefenstahl was praised after the war when he spoke of the horrors he felt when he learned of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and Kretschmer watched in disbelief that his „wounds had not yet healed”.
Riefenstahl meticulously cataloged the hundreds of letters written in her support, including a thank-you note from a well-known Holocaust denier with messages such as „Don’t let the pigs get you down.”
A letter Riefenstahl wrote to a long-time friend clearly expresses her grief over the end of the Nazi era. In it she talks about „murdered ideals”.
His telephone conversations with Hitler’s architect and armaments minister, Albert Speer, offer a brief glimpse into the quiet post-war lives of former members of former Nazi circles.
The pair discuss renovating Alka’s beautiful mountain home and compare notes on the pay they get for giving talks or interviews. „Every time I go on TV, they say I share the blame,” he laments to Speer.[for] All the atrocities, the concentration camps.”
Pictures from his archives show the two walking in the Alps together in snow boots and fashionable winter clothes.
The documentary sheds light on events in Riefenstahl’s life, where Weil said she shunned physical positions that did not conform to the Nazi ideals of strength and beauty she championed in films such as Triumph of the Will.
Willie ZielkeA renowned filmmaker, whom he hired to film a prologue to the film Olympia documenting the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was admitted to a mental ward for exhaustion and psychosis at the end of the project. She was later forcibly sterilized under Nazi law in 1937. Despite being aware of his plight, Riefenstahl failed to intervene on his behalf, Weiell said.
Weill and the film’s producer, Sandra Maischberger, are considered by Riefenstahl as a great artist who must reconsider Hitler’s desire to use his talents to advance his career. But they „expect a backlash” when the film premieres in Venice. high respect Riefenstahl is still held in the film world.
Maischberger, one of Germany’s leading television talk show hosts, said his fascination with Riefenstahl began when he interviewed the filmmaker in 2002 to mark his 100th birthday. „I left home in Pöcking with more questions than answers,” he said.
He said he and Weil were skeptical of discovering the truth about Riefenstahl’s life, as were the 700 boxes of objects in his garden, which an army of historians and researchers soon concluded he had heavily edited.
Instead, they claimed, they found evidence of an „activist” who remained committed to Nazi ideology until the end.
One detail they discovered was a note written casually on a page of his calendar, Maischberger recalled. It said „Vote NPD”, referring to the post-war neo-Nazi party.
„Totalny pionier w sieci. Specjalista od piwa niezależny. Ewangelista popkultury. Miłośnik muzyki. Nieprzepraszający przedsiębiorca”.