2023-06-03 17:47:21
Charlottsville, US state of Virginia, August 2017: Right-wing extremists demonstrate, chanting “The jews will never replace us.” “The Jews will never replace us.” , do not rest. The journalist gets to work and does research with his team. It takes almost a year to complete the documentary: “Never Again”. What happened to his grandparents and other family members in Poland should never happen once more: dehumanized by the Nazis, deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, killed and burned there.
Presentation in Berlin
Wolf Blitzer presents “Never Again” on Saturday in Berlin in front of invited guests. On Thursday, the journalist and moderator, who has become a global news force, thanks in particular to the news program “The Situation Room” on CNN, received the largest award from the Rias Media Prize for his documentary. Helge Fuhst, head of ARD-aktuell in Hamburg, who was on the jury, used the award ceremony and the award winner to organize a screening. And thus also raising the question of whether and when a German television station will include the CNN production in its program.
The 75-year-old Wolf Blitzer is wide awake and inspiring in conversation. His father, who is no longer alive, would probably describe the fact that he is now showing a documentary regarding the Holocaust in a Berlin cinema as “revenge on Hitler,” said Blitzer. “Never Again” mixes the history of the Holocaust with the family history of the Blitzers. David Blitzer gave testimony in picture and sound regarding his terrible experiences in Poland during the Nazi years, but his son Wolf only found out much later that there was a video as well as the soundtrack.
“Never Again” has a dramaturgy that is as simple as it is haunting. He goes to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as a visitor and thus as a documentary presenter. The permanent exhibition is committed to the belief that it can only provide questions and not answers: why do people hate other people, why did the Nazi Germans hate the Jews so much that they killed six million?
In the impressive and very personal 45 minutes, Holocaust survivors such as David Blitzer and Steven Fenver describe the horror, museum director Sara J. Bloomfield and a young volunteer from the museum are interviewed, also to show how the Holocaust is remembered – and forgotten – in America today . Viewers follow Blitzer on his walking tour, learning regarding the history of the Holocaust, his family’s place in that history, and his role as a child by survivors who are carrying on their legacy of Holocaust education.
“May their memories be a blessing”, Wolf Blitzer quoted the Jewish prayer for the dead. May their memories be a blessing.
The documentary repeatedly deepens the images and testimonies of the museum through archive material. Cruel and the most gruesome pictures are shown of how the Nazi Germans decided and carried out the death, the industrial annihilation of the Jews. The Nazi was a murderer to the Jew.
David Blitzer and his wife survived the horror. After the war they went to Augsburg, the American occupation zone, where Helena Blitzer and her brother Wolf were born in 1948. When there was a chance of getting a US visa, David Blitzer grabbed it, the family emigrated to Buffalo in the US state of New York, and David Blitzer became a successful building contractor. But the experiences before and in Auschwitz also emigrated. The Holocaust remained a (conversational) topic in the family and community.
Wolf Blitzer said it is a problem that few of the Holocaust survivors are still alive because the generation has become very old. It is especially good for younger generations to talk to them. When asked how he explained growing anti-Semitism, referring to the USA he said that hatred of Jews had existed there for a very long time and that it kept coming back from time to time, which was painful.
Blitzer has repeatedly traveled to Germany, both professionally and privately, and not only to his native city of Augsburg. He acknowledges that the Germans would face up to their deeds and their past. And he wanted to encourage German television to report on how the daughters and sons of (Nazi) Germans dealt with their family history. The US government, for its part, is trying to fight anti-Semitism, according to Blitzer. A national strategy was adopted last week with numerous measures aimed, for example, at raising awareness of anti-Semitism in society. “Never Again” remains a task, a challenge, a constant struggle.
So far, “Never Again” has only aired on CNN International. It would be a omission, even an absurdity, if no German broadcaster included the documentary in its program.
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