Watching Judgement at Nuremberg

[PCIntern]

specifically Burt Lancaster’s speech from the witness stand. His testimony about Germany could be applied to the USA without question.

I first saw this film when I was seven at a drive-in. It traumatized me -I was supposed to be asleep and watched the whole film. Almost no one had seen the films of the concentration camps and the genocide and I never forgot it.

Never again.

[applegrove]

1. Never seen it. Don't think i could stand seeing much live footage of the

people in the camps.

[PCIntern]

2. Stanley Kramer film. Superb

for it’s day. Same director as On The Beach. Fantastic cast.

[ProfessorGAC]

46. Yes

It is a fantastic movie.
I second your recommendation.

[BobTheSubgenius]

16. Me too. Absolutely.

Especially when you more or less know the ending.

[wnylib]

19. If you get a chance to see the movie,

I strongly recommend it. The film of the concentration camps is important, but it is a small section of the movie that you can fast forward through or jump to the next scene if it bothers you too much to see it.

This is an excellent film that reminds people of the need for morality, integrity, and personal responsibility in the midst of depravity. Well worth seeing. I have a copy of it that I ordered online. Spencer Tracy's closing speech to the court is awesome. His last line later to one of the convicted prisoners sums up the theme of the movie and the trials.

[oasis]

3. Captivating film. Tracy, Dietrich, Judy Garland, Richard Widmark, along

with Lancaster, had superb performances.

[Elwood P Dowd]

5. Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer) was in that movie. He escaped Nazi Europe in the 1930s.

I wonder if William Shatner is the only member of the cast still alive?

[oasis]

12. Shatner's gotta be the only one left. Maximilian Schell died 2014.

[Codifer]

7. Not to forget

Captain Kirk...... a really, really young Captain Kirk.

[oasis]

14. Shatner must've been in awe of all the talent surrounding him. nt

[Murphyb849]

4. I did the same thing

And I feel the same way

[spanone]

6. K&R

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. An incredible movie.

I saw it when it first came out. I'm pretty sure that was the first time concentration camp footage was shown in this country.

Actually, it's an important movie and should probably be part of high school history classes.

[wnylib]

20. Not sure, but I think the concentration camp films

Last edited Thu May 20, 2021, 03:10 AM - Edit history (1)

were shown in newsreels before the movie was made.

Agree that it is an important film that should be part of every high school curriculum.

Can't say enough in praise of this movie. Extremely well written and well performed. Very realistic.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

22. Possibly. I am not entirely certain.

I was quite young, only 13 when that movie came out, so my impression that it was the first time the concentration camp films were shown could be wrong. Even if they'd been shown in newsreels before, they were not widely disseminated, and I do think this movie was an important factor in them being shown.

[BigmanPigman]

26. Yes, I have seen many short films

or news clips whenever I was gathering information about WW2 and the Holocaust. Films were shot at most of the liberated camps. I think FDR and Eisenhower wanted films for proof that the genocide did occur. Smart move on their part. Director George Stevens directed a lot of the short films.

[wnylib]

40. Without films as documentation

it would have been difficult to prove the Holocaust. Nazis and ordinary Germans denied the death camps ever existed. And ordinary people, regardless of where they were, would not have wanted to believe what happened. It is so horrendous that people recoil from the truth, not wanting to believe that such things are possible.

[Blue Dawn]

9. I watched it tonight.

I have seen it several times and am always deeply moved by the court proceedings. Men absolved themselves of any personal responsibility for the heinous acts that took place.

Superb acting.

[Joinfortmill]

10. Amen

[3Hotdogs]

11. There was a documentary made -- 50's or 60's, about WW2. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?

I believe it was on N.B.C.

One segment of the doc, was filmed through a glass window in one of the gas chambers. It lasted 10, maybe 15 seconds and showed Jews while being gassed and falling to the floor of the gas chamber.

I will never forget that scene.

[thucythucy]

31. I saw that as a kid.

Not sure but I think it was CBS.

William Shirer (author of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and interviewed in the 3 part documentary) was the CBS correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1941.

Interesting historical note: Shirer also wrote Berlin Diary, which is his day by day account of living in Nazi Germany. In 1941 there was talk of Hollywood making a movie based on the book. Conservatives in Congress called for an "investigation" of Hollywood for its ant-Nazi bias. That ended of course when Germany declared war on the US on December 11, 1941, but it shows you where conservative heads were at.

The more things change...

[3Hotdogs]

33. The documentary is still available but without that scene.

[thucythucy]

34. Do you mean without the concentration camp footage

shown in part in "Judgment in Nuremburg"?

I wonder why they'd cut that. Were they worried about audience squeamishness, or do they think to show it is an affront to the victims? I'd be curious to know the reasoning behind that decision.

Or are you talking about something else?

[3Hotdogs]

35. I used to show it to my class.

Sometime during my teaching career, (1970- 87) the documentary came from the county library without the scene.

I don't know why it was omitted.

[thucythucy]

42. Interesting.

Maybe the BBC cut it to increase sales in America?

Which if true is a sad comment on our nation.

Even with the deleted scenes, how did your classes respond? Does any particular reaction stand out in your mind?

[3Hotdogs]

44. I don't recall students' reaction. It was 40 years ago.

I’m still trying to process watching 30 or so, people dying on screen.

[thucythucy]

45. Understood.

William Shirer was amazing. If you haven't read "Berlin Diary" or his biography of Gandhi they're both well worth the read. The movie was very much based on his book, and as near as I can tell the Martin Sheen character in the movie is more or less based on Shirer when he was a correspondent in India (and Afghanistan).

Best wishes.

[Mira]

13. Watched it again a few weeks ago

It's one of the critical things I do. I stay traumatized. I watch other things about the third Reich era, but the Judgment film has the advantage of additionally being a work of art with the excellence of the acting.

I watch Sophie Scholl's movie. They beheaded her a year before I was born. My Dad recognized a young man's name and asked him if he was related to the horrible judge who sentenced her to die. That judge was his uncle.
What I am saying here is that these films are very important, and should never be relegated to "History". It was not long ago.....

Have you seen "The Harmonists"?
It's a wonder, I love it.

[thucythucy]

32. I recommend "Come and See"

which was filmed in 1988 (I think) about the German invasion and occupation of Belarus. It's about a young boy (fourteen or so) whose family is murdered by the Germans and joins a partisan group.

Trigger warning: it's regarded by many as the most realistic depiction of the trauma of war ever made. It's also an absolute film masterpiece.

[pazzyanne]

15. Didn't see Judgement at Nuremberg, but I did see Fog and Night,

which was a French underground short film documentary just before lunch. For some reason I wasn't hungry that day.

[tonedevil]

23. I saw that in high school, it still haunts me. /nt

[yellowdogintexas]

17. Stephanie Miller's father was on the prosecution team

for that trial.

I saw that movie back when "Saturday Night at the Movies" was in its first year. My mother made me watch it because she was adamant that we know about WWII and especially the Holocaust.

She always said that we should never think it couldn't happen here, because it could.

She would have hated #FormerGuy even more than she hated Nixon and that is really saying a LOT.

[3Hotdogs]

37. Barry Goldwater was at Nuremberg?

[BigmanPigman]

18. I recorded the last hour

but I have seen it several times. Monty Clift breaks my heart.

When I Googled info about the facts I was really pissed off that few of the Nazi criminals were spending any, if any, time in prison. This was due to the Cold War and trying not to piss people off (Germans) that we wanted to side with the US against Communism.

[wnylib]

21. My copy of the movie tells

at the end what happened a few years later in regard to the sentences and how the pursuit of Nazi criminals was dropped due to the Cold War emphasis on communism.

I was 11 years old when Adolf Eichmann was tried in Israel. I was still in grade school (6th grade) and coming home for lunch. My grandmother's sister lived with us. Grandma and Great Aunt Emma had come to the US from Germany as very young children with their parents. That was in 1890, long before the first World War.

At lunch, my mother and Aunt Emma were watching the trial on TV. They would not let me see it because they felt that the testimony was not suitable for a child to hear. But I remember getting a glimpse of Eichmann in his glass booth before they chased me out of the room. I also remember Aunt Emma crying over what had happened in her country of birth.

Because I wanted to know more about how such atrocities could happen, I read several books, fiction and non fiction, about how the Nazis came to power, how they operated, and how the German people and people in occupied countries acted. They included several Leon Uris books, Mitchener's enormous book on Israel, The Source, Herman Wouk's Winds of War and the sequel, War and Remembrance, and many more. Among the mostcinformative was a biography of Hitler that was published in the 1970s, Adolph Hitler, A Definitive Biography by John Toland.

My collection of movies on the period include: Schindler's List, Casablanca, Escape from Sobibor, Hidden in Silence, and Walking With the Enemy. All the movies except Casablanca, are based on real people and events. I also have a documentary about Anne Frank which consists of interviews with people who knew her and her family, Anne Frank Remembered.

One book that I would like to see made into a movie is A Night of Watching. It's the story of how the Danish underground and general population managed to get a huge number of Danish Jews out of the country when they learned about the Nazi plan to round them up for deportation to the camps.

There is so much material available that people can learn from.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. The book "Treblinka"

is incredible and heart rending. I read it when it first came out, around 1966. Absolutely incredibly. I recommend it to all.

[wnylib]

25. I'm not familiar with it but will look it up.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. It came out a very long time ago, probably in the 1960s.

I'm old, and so I remember all sorts of things. This book was heartrending and incredible. I hope you can find a copy and read it.

[wnylib]

41. Should be at my local library.

[Hortensis]

28. Agree, but I traumatized myself reading too much about

the Final Solution. Treblinka's unusual in that it records a successful revolt in which hundreds escaped, though all but a few died anyway. A relatively positive peer into the abyss.

[3Hotdogs]

36. Casablanca --- everyone remembers the scene in the bar, German soldiers singing, then drowned out by

Rick's patrons.

There was a D.U. post a few years ago about that scene.

In that scene there is the blond woman, camera focused on her for only. two or three seconds. And there is an intensity in her face and the beginning of tears in her eyes. She was a jewish war refugee. The film was released in 1943. Hence, her intensity in singing the anthem.

[Elwood P Dowd]

39. Here ya' go...

[thucythucy]

43. To me that was the best acted scene in the movie.

Being involved in the disability community it hit me especially hard--though it's true to say the entire movie is both well acted and moving.

The scenes with Marlana Dietrich also stand out, especially when she recites the German lyrics of Lily Marlene. She of course had a hit with that tune in both Germany and America.

[Hortensis]

29. For insights into and parallels with what's happening to the [u]Republican Party[/u],

how about hair-raising contemporaneous accounts by people who witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany and other nations in the 1930s?

This isn't 1930s Germany, trumpists aren't seeking lebensraum to fulfill Germany's mystic master race destiny, and trumpists aren't yet empowered to attack people they don't like on the streets, but...they are the same kind of people. The same excuses of victimization to "justify" hostility and aggression, the same determined dedication to their leader's lies, the same unquestioning support no matter what he does, and even, in some, the same strong preference for mysticism over science that we see in many being drawn in now, like the QNuts.

William Shirer's Berlin Diary, 1 or 1 and 2. And then of course there's his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. They're before modern science studied authoritarianism, and his understanding of the roots of the madness as a peculiarly German thing reflect notions of the times, but otherwise...!

Walker's Danzig, a Novel of Political Intrigue, is free on Kindle Unlimited, enjoyable novel but a serious message about how the fascists maneuvered leaders into offering them agreements and attempts at appeasement as ruthless steps in their strategies to take over the continent.

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black In Nazi Germany for a really unique experience. It's very good to know from the beginning that the child's story doesn't end with pounding on the door. He grows up mixed black but intact in a nation that's forcibly sterilizing and castrating others to prevent further racial mixing, survives the war to join his father in Africa and eventually moves to the U.S., where he of course encounters the same racist attitudes as in Germany.

[Kid Berwyn]

30. "Above all, there was fear."

When this film was released, JFK was President.

After his death, the NAZIs came back.

[lunatica]

38. Not too long ago Netflix had a documentary on the prosecutor of

the Neuremberg trial. It was excellent. His name is Ben Ferencz.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwixx-u5ptnwAhXRLs0KHbfACKgQwqsBMAd6BAgEEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F303286595&usg=AOvVaw1cUae5WPMF8wi2qmRan0RC

[peggysue2]

47. In high school I read the works of Leon Uris

The concentration camps were never discussed in our classwork. Uris wrote a fictional account of the Warsaw ghetto, the Nazi roundup, the murders, the burning of the ghetto, after which the survivors were packed up and sent to their deaths. I recall asking my mother about the novel. Is this real? Did this happen? I asked. She waved me off. It was obvious a topic that would not, could not be discussed.

As a freshman in college, I attended a filming of the British liberating one of the concentration camps. Film, taken in real time as they entered the camp and attempted to deal with the mountains of dead bodies (with massive pits and heavy machinery). I went to the filming alone; I couldn't convince anyone to join me.

My reaction? I thought I would literally pass out from the gruesome images. Or get sick. I have never seen anything as shocking or vile.

It was the moment I realized what human beings are capable of when evil, bigotry, superstition, ignorance takes hold of a population. It was a shocking revelation at the age of eighteen.

It is still shocking.