Posted on 10/08/2007 7:26:09 PM PDT by fishhound
A new film about Nazi counterfeiting simply had to be made, its director tells Marc Lee
Stefan Ruzowitzky stands in the middle of Vienna's vast Heldenplatz and points to a balcony high on the palace that looms over the south side of the square.
"That," he says, "is where Hitler stood and addressed the crowd – hundreds of thousands of them."
Then, indicating the four arches of the grand palace gates to the west, he adds:
"And that's where he marched in." Following closely behind the Führer that day – April 15, 1938 – was Ruzowitzky's great-uncle, a prominent local politician.
Hitler had travelled to Vienna to announce the Anschluss, calling it "the entry of my homeland into the German Reich". A contemporary newspaper report said the scenes of "infatuation" at Hitler's arrival defied description.
A year later, Europe was at war and Austria was inextricably entwined in the atrocities of the Holocaust. Seven decades later, a chill from history still lingers in Heldenplatz.
Although he was born 16 years after the end of the Second World War, Ruzowitzky discusses the terrible events of that period as though he has an unbreakable connection to them. He readily acknowledges that all four of his grandparents were Nazi sympathisers, and talks candidly about the guilt that many of his own generation feel about the evils of the Third Reich.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
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