This series main value is in showing the Weiss family members living
their perfectly ordinary lives, and then gradually realizing the big
mistake they had committed when they felt Nazism was a passing fad.
One can feel the increasing desperation of those people, the almost
useless attempts to feel hope, and the final realization that the only
way was to fight back, or at least try to. In creating a bond between
the viewer and the characters, a special empathy is formed where we
feel we must protect those fictional yet real people and never allow
that situation to happen again.
However, what can we do? Examining the last few decades of human
history, we clearly see that mass murder and genocide aren't just an
accident, they seem to happen regularly, given a chance. And "being
civilized" by itself doesn't seem to be a solution, as we are reminded
in "Holocaust", it happened in the land of Beethoven and Schiller. And
here is where I saw this series biggest shortcoming. It fails to
adequately display the attitudes of the common German people of the
time.
Erik Dorf is the most unsatisfactory character to me. He is
transformed suddenly from a shy and mild mannered unemployed lawyer
into a shy and mild mannered Reinhard Heydrich's assistant. He
repeatedly suggests to his boss new formulas for genocide, without
absolutely any feeling for the people with whom he had social
relations before Nazism came along. People are not like that. An
intelligent and introspective man like Dorf, would certainly be able
to imagine himself in the position of his victims. The first real
feeling he shows is when Colonel Blodel makes him actually shoot a man.
In Blodel's words, "when you kill one Jew you feel it easier to kill
ten", or words to that effect. That sounds more like it. The Germans
didn't suddenly wake up one morning and say: "Hey, folks, you know
what? Let's do a genocide!". The gradual build up of the forces that
brought the Holocaust along is what should really be avoided, if we
truly want to keep it from happening again.
However, from the producer's standpoint, I can see how difficult this
proposition is. It would be very difficult to show a typical German
family, from the Weimar chaos, through the economical Depression of
the early 1930's, into the new hopes brought by the Nazi coming to
power, fueled by the Goebbels propaganda. At least some viewers would
sympathize with those characters, some people might think it perfectly
natural to gradually evolve into a mass killer. Some people might not
realize there is a point where any moral creature should draw a line,
as many Germans didn't.
But amoral and heartless people do exist, they have always existed in
any society. The question is how that kind of people can come to
control a nation, and how to avoid it in the future. This question was
never even remotely treated in "Holocaust". In the end, given the TV
medium, perhaps this is the best that could be done, but just be aware
that this is a fiction story about a fictional family going through
extreme adversity. It's not a historic account or analysis, by any
means. It was worth seeing on TV as a series, but not on video. Too
long. With good editing, maybe a nice two or three hour long film
could be cut from it.
their perfectly ordinary lives, and then gradually realizing the big
mistake they had committed when they felt Nazism was a passing fad.
One can feel the increasing desperation of those people, the almost
useless attempts to feel hope, and the final realization that the only
way was to fight back, or at least try to. In creating a bond between
the viewer and the characters, a special empathy is formed where we
feel we must protect those fictional yet real people and never allow
that situation to happen again.
However, what can we do? Examining the last few decades of human
history, we clearly see that mass murder and genocide aren't just an
accident, they seem to happen regularly, given a chance. And "being
civilized" by itself doesn't seem to be a solution, as we are reminded
in "Holocaust", it happened in the land of Beethoven and Schiller. And
here is where I saw this series biggest shortcoming. It fails to
adequately display the attitudes of the common German people of the
time.
Erik Dorf is the most unsatisfactory character to me. He is
transformed suddenly from a shy and mild mannered unemployed lawyer
into a shy and mild mannered Reinhard Heydrich's assistant. He
repeatedly suggests to his boss new formulas for genocide, without
absolutely any feeling for the people with whom he had social
relations before Nazism came along. People are not like that. An
intelligent and introspective man like Dorf, would certainly be able
to imagine himself in the position of his victims. The first real
feeling he shows is when Colonel Blodel makes him actually shoot a man.
In Blodel's words, "when you kill one Jew you feel it easier to kill
ten", or words to that effect. That sounds more like it. The Germans
didn't suddenly wake up one morning and say: "Hey, folks, you know
what? Let's do a genocide!". The gradual build up of the forces that
brought the Holocaust along is what should really be avoided, if we
truly want to keep it from happening again.
However, from the producer's standpoint, I can see how difficult this
proposition is. It would be very difficult to show a typical German
family, from the Weimar chaos, through the economical Depression of
the early 1930's, into the new hopes brought by the Nazi coming to
power, fueled by the Goebbels propaganda. At least some viewers would
sympathize with those characters, some people might think it perfectly
natural to gradually evolve into a mass killer. Some people might not
realize there is a point where any moral creature should draw a line,
as many Germans didn't.
But amoral and heartless people do exist, they have always existed in
any society. The question is how that kind of people can come to
control a nation, and how to avoid it in the future. This question was
never even remotely treated in "Holocaust". In the end, given the TV
medium, perhaps this is the best that could be done, but just be aware
that this is a fiction story about a fictional family going through
extreme adversity. It's not a historic account or analysis, by any
means. It was worth seeing on TV as a series, but not on video. Too
long. With good editing, maybe a nice two or three hour long film
could be cut from it.