Holocaust

Holocaust Information

Holocaust is an American television miniseries broadcast in four parts in 1978 on the NBC television network. The series tells the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of the (fictional) Weiss family of German Jews and that of a rising member of the SS, who gradually becomes a merciless war criminal. Holocaust highlighted numerous important events which occurred up to and during World War II, such as Kristallnacht, the creation of Jewish ghettos and later, the use of gas chambers. Although the miniseries won several awards and received critical acclaim, it was criticized by some, including noted Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, who described it as "untrue and offensive."

The series was presented in four parts:

Part 1 - The Gathering Darkness (original airdate: April 16, 1978)
Part 2 - The Road to Babi Yar (original airdate: April 17, 1978)
Part 3 - The Final Solution (original airdate: April 18, 1978)
Part 4 - The Saving Remnant (original airdate: April 19, 1978)

Plot

A German Jewish family, the Weisses, consists of Dr. Josef Weiss (Fritz Weaver), the father; Berta Weiss (Rosemary Harris), the mother and talented pianist; Karl Weiss (James Woods), an artist who is married to a Christian woman named Inga Helms-Weiss (Meryl Streep); Rudi Weiss (Joseph Bottoms), an independent, rebellious soccer player; Anna Weiss (Blanche Baker), the young daughter; and Moses Weiss (Sam Wanamaker), Joseph's brother and a chemist from Warsaw. Throughout the series, each member of the Weiss family experiences hardships and are ultimately led to a terrible fate, with the exception of Rudi and Inga.

Dr. Weiss is a respected doctor (GP) from Berlin. After losing his right to treat "Aryan" patients, he is deported to Poland for being a foreign citizen. He becomes a member of the Judenrat (Jewish council) for the Warsaw ghetto. Josef is sent to Auschwitz along with his wife for attempting to save Jews from the Warsaw ghetto's liquidation process. At Auschwitz, he is assigned to road labor for Uncle Kurt (of Erik Dorf; see below), who is trying to save several Jews by having them work for him. Uncle Kurt then is punished for using Jews when he shouldn't have and the Jews on his crew (including Josef) are all sent to the gas chambers.

Mrs. Berta Weiss, after her husband's deportation, survives with the help of Inga and her family. She is later deported to the Warsaw ghetto to be reunited with Josef. Berta then obtains a job teaching at the school before eventually being sent to the gas chamber (at Auschwitz).

Anna Weiss, unresponsive after being raped by German soldiers earlier in the series, is sent to a sanitarium in Hadamar and killed by carbon monoxide poisoning as part of the Nazi Action 14f13.

Karl Weiss is arrested and sent to Buchenwald. Later, a family friend of Inga's, Heinz Muller, has Karl transferred to Theresienstadt where he works in the art studio. He and the other artists secretly make pictures depicting the reality of the Ghetto. When the pictures are discovered, the artists are tortured by the SS and all but Karl die. Karl is then (after hearing of his wife's pregnancy) transferred to Auschwitz and put on the Sonderkommandos, he finds out that both of his parents were taken to Auschwitz. Subsequently, Karl's health deteriorates badly and he dies the day Auschwitz is liberated.

Rudi Weiss, having run away from Berlin, goes to Czechoslovakia, where he meets Helena Slomova (Tovah Feldshuh). They escape together to the Ukraine where they fight for years with Jewish partisans, led by Uncle Sasha, a doctor who lost his family earlier in the war. After fighting against SS and Ukrainian soldiers, Rudi is ultimately captured, and Helena is shot and killed. Rudi wakes up in Sobibor where he meets Leon Feldhandler and Alexander Pechersky and escapes, during the uprising. Rudi decides to travel alone back through Europe and find his family.

Moses Weiss owns a pharmacy in Warsaw. When Josef and the Lowys are deported, he finds a place for them to stay. Like his brother, he is put on the Judenrat. After hearing that the SS are planning to kill all Jews in Europe, he starts a resistance movement. This movement fights against the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, after receiving weapons from Christian Poles. They are initially successful, but the SS discovers their secret hiding places and uses gas to force them to walk out and face the wall, where they are all shot.

Karl's wife, Inga, eventually sacrifices her freedom to join him in Theresienstadt where he is commissioned as an artist. Desperately trying throughout most of the series to reach Karl in various camps, Inga can only get letters through to him if she performs sexual favors for Heinz Muller. Threatening to keep her husband involved in heavy physical work if she does not acquiesce to his requests, the SS sergeant rapes her. After arriving at Theresienstadt to reunite with Karl, Inga becomes pregnant with his child. A fellow artist sells Karl's paintings of horrific concentration camp scenes, the Gestapo finds them, tortures the artists and when Karl refuses to aid the Nazi investigation, he is sent to Auschwitz.

At the end of the series, Rudi meets Inga in the liberated Thresienstadt, later revealing that he found out what happened to his parents and Karl at Auschwitz. Inga reveals that despite Karl telling her not to, she had the baby and named him Josef (after her father-in-law). Inga decided to take her child back to Berlin, to reunite with her family. The fate of Rudi is unknown at the denouement of the series, but he is offered a job smuggling orphaned Jewish children into Palestine. The series ends with Rudi playing football with Jewish Greek children.

Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), a lawyer from Berlin, is another major character in the series. At the urging of his ambitious wife, Marta, the apolitical Dorf joins the SS after failing to find alternative employment. Dorf is put in charge of major extermination operations at Nazi extermination camps; coordinating mass murder burdens his conscience at first, but over time he becomes more and more ruthless in the name of "following orders". After the war ends, he is captured by the United States Army, and told that he will be tried for war crimes. Dorf decides to follow the example of many other Nazi officials and commits suicide by taking a cyanide pill.

Cast

Fritz Weaver as Dr. Josef Weis
Joseph Bottoms as Rudi Weiss
Michael Moriarty as Erik Dorff
David Warner as Reinhard Heydrich
T. P. McKenna as Colonel Blobel
Tovah Feldshuh as Helena Slomova
Marius Goring as Heinrich Palitz
Rosemary Harris as Berta Palitz Weiss
Ian Holm as Heinrich Himmler
Lee Montague as Uncle Sasha

Deborah Norton as Marta Dorff
George Rose as Mr. Lowy
Robert Stephens as Uncle Kurt Dorff
Meryl Streep as Inga Helms Weiss
James Woods as Karl Weiss
Sam Wanamaker as Moses Weiss
Michael Beck as Hans Helms
Tony Haygarth as Heinz Muller
Tom Bell as Adolf Eichmann

Production

Holocaust was produced by Robert Berger, and was filmed on location in Austria and West Berlin. It was broadcast in four parts from April 16 to April 19. The series was popular, earning a 49% market share; it was also received well in Europe.

The nine and a half hour program starred Fritz Weaver, Meryl Streep, James Woods and Michael Moriarty, as well as a large supporting cast. It was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, a veteran of many television specials, including ABC's highly successful miniseries Roots, which first aired in 1977. The teleplay was written by novelist-producer Gerald Green, who later adapted the script into a novel.

Reception

Critical reception

Some critics accused the miniseries of trivializing the Holocaust. The television format meant the realism of the situation was muted, whilst the fact that NBC made a financial gain from advertising led to accusations that the tragedy was being commercialized. Holocaust's creators defended it by arguing that it was an important factor in developing and maintaining awareness of the Holocaust. The television critic Clive James commended the production. Writing in The Observer (reprinted in his collection The Crystal Bucket), he commented:

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Moreover, the Polish community in the United States found controversial and untrue that soldiers who were supervising transports of Jews and were executing them during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were dressed in Polish military uniforms.

With an estimated viewership of up to 15 million households, Holocaust turned out to be extremely popular during its initial airing in West Germany in 1979, which led to an increase in public interest for the crimes committed during the Nazi era. In January 1979, Holocaust aired in West Germany. The series which was watched by 20 million people or 50% West Germans first brought the matter of the genocide in World War II to widespread public attention in a way that it never been before. After each part of Holocaust was aired, there was a companion show where a panel of historians could answer questions from people phoning in. The historian's panels were literally overwhelmed with thousands of phone calls from shocked and outraged Germans, a great many of whom stated that they were born after 1945 and that was the first time that they learned that their country had practiced genocide in World War II. The German historian Alf Lüdtke wrote that the historians "could not cope" as they were faced with thousands of angry phone-callers asking how these things could happen or why they had never learned about them at school. Subsequently the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache named the term "Holocaust" as German Word of the Year.

Awards

Holocaust won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. The series also won Emmys for Meryl Streep, Moriarty and Blanche Baker. Morton Gould's music was nominated, but did not win. Gould's music score was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score for a Movie or Television Program. Co-stars David Warner, Sam Wanamaker, Tovah Feldshuh, Fritz Weaver and Rosemary Harris were all nominated for, but did not win, Emmys. However, Harris won a Golden Globe Award (for Best TV Actress - Drama) for her performance, as did Moriarty (for Best TV Actor - Drama).

DVD releases

Holocaust was released in the U.S.A. as a Region 1 DVD by Paramount Pictures and CBS Home Entertainment on May 27, 2008. The Region 2 DVD followed on 15 August 2010. A disclaimer on the DVD packaging states that it may be edited from the original network broadcast version and is shorter at 446m. The Region 4 DVD is unusually in native NTSC format having not been converted to PAL. No information is currently available to explain the reason for the half hour of missing footage. However, it seems to be clear that the time difference is not simply due to the NTSC/PAL conversion 4% speedup effect.