Thursday, June 27, 2013

Zusammenarbeit Macht Frei

From: Wikipedia

"In The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler, Ben Urwand draws on a wealth of previously uncited documents to argue that Hollywood studios, in an effort to protect the German market for their movies, not only acquiesced to Nazi censorship but also actively and enthusiastically cooperated with that regime’s global propaganda effort.
     In the 1930s 'Hollywood is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany,' Mr. Urwand said by telephone from Cambridge, Mass., where he is currently at Harvard’s prestigious Society of Fellows. 'It’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being.'…
     Mr. Urwand strongly defended the notion of 'collaboration,' noting that the word (and its German equivalent, Zusammenarbeit) occurs repeatedly in documents on both sides.
     And he bristled at the suggestion that Hollywood had a better record against Nazism than other major industries, to say nothing of the State Department, which repeatedly blocked efforts to expand visas for Jewish refugees.
     'The State Department’s record is atrocious,' he said. 'But the State Department did not finance the production of Nazi armaments. It did not distribute pro-Nazi newsreels in Germany. It did not meet with Nazi officials and do secret deals.'
     'Collaboration,' he added, 'is what the studios were doing, and how they describe it.'”
— Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times
Read more…

Mr. Urwand's book will be released in October; preorder it here...

No comments:

Post a Comment