Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleaques of studying and communicating the terrible truth of the Holocaust as well as the moral lessons for man-kind of to-day. I am both happy and proud to have been offered this oppotunity to present my own research into the notorius Nazi propaganda film "Der ewige Jude", because this disgusting film in many ways has developped into my apparantly "eternal" task in life. I have been studying the film for more than 25 years and I have tried to evaluate its significance for the development of the Holocaust. Therefore this presentation is going to be more personal and dedicated than you probably will be used to from other scholarly papers.

Having passed the aequivalent to a B.A.-degree at the Historical Institute at the University of Copenhagen in 1970, I was accepted as a student, heading for the socalled mag.art. It should be stressed, that this is structured as a research study, where you are on your own and have to write four major thesis from different periods of general history, supervised by a professor with full rights. On average it takes two years to write each of these papers, which in my case had a length between 75 and 250 pages. Then you pass an oral examination and you end up with a public lecture on a topic, which is handed out to you a week before. Therefore, as an intellectual test it has the same university traditions as the German Promotion (Dr.phil.)

For technical reasons I had to write something on the history of the 20. century, which had no interest for me. I wanted to become a keeper of a cultural historical museum, making research into the significance of medieval wall-paintings as historical evidence. However,I loved going to the movies and I contacted a professor, Niels Skyum-Nielsen, who had a little studygroup with film-freaks. I was admitted to the group, and on the second Friday - i.e. September 12, 1970 - I saw "Der ewige Jude" for the first time. And I got very little out of it, because I have had only very little German in school. Skyum-Nielsen was about to write an introduction for historians about source-critical film analysis and needed good examples of different kind of manipulations.

Two student groups were formed that Friday: One for "Der ewige Jude", the other for the first film of the "Why we fright"-series: "Prelude to War". As you probably already have guessed, I was assigned to the German group - and I have ever since been fighting the "Fatwah of The Eternal Jew". Each time, when I think, that I have closed the book, some new and important turns up - and I have felt compelled to carry on with my research.

I am not going to tell the story of my life. I would, however, like to stress that I have paid for the whole project out of my own pocket. Why? The answer is simple: I had to do it.

I am not affiliated with a university - the Historical Institute in Copenhagen considers me a bit crazy and does not even answer my letters! - and it takes a lot of efforts to find people like you, who are willing to listen and to discuss. I would therefore also allow myself to use this opportunity to ask you about other groups, institutions or organisations etc, which could be interested to discuss with me - or perhaps even invite me for an upcoming conference or a guest-lecture.

When I started my research on "Der ewige Jude" in 1970, I applied the source-critical model that the afore mentioned Niels Skyum-Nielsen had created. First of all the commentary was transcribed. Then at least a picture from each shot was taken - and it was possible the script with all-in-all 713 shots. You will finde it all in my source-critical edition in German, although with long descritions of the visuals instead of stills. The publisher considered it to be too dangerous to have all the pictures from the film published.

I have analyzed the film in many different ways in order to establish the origins and authenticity of the visuals and the text, which was spoken by Harry Giese whose authoritative voice was used in the contemporary News-reels. In the first round it was simply a question of finding out, what was "true" and what was "not true".

The visuals were divided in two groups: Shots made specifically for "Der ewige Jude" - and archive footage. Regarding the archive material I searched for the original source and the use of the same shot in other Nazi productions - in order to check possible manipulations and thereby evaluating, why this particular shot was used in the film.

The analysis of the new footage - recorded specificly for "Der ewige Jude" - was based on frame-to-frame observations concerning camera angle, setting of light, the semiotic implications of the motive, allways asking the question, why this shot was included in the film. From contemporary sources as well as Hipplers’ autobiography we know that he - on Goebbels’ orders - went to Lodz on October 11, 1939, with a group of professional camera people.

The Head of the Film Department of the Ministry of Propaganda returned with footage to Berlin on October 16. The rushes were developped the same day and shown to Goebbels during the evening. The pictures of half-an-hour with ritual slaughtering, deliberately staged as cruelty to animals, schocked Goebbels who wrote in his diary the next morning: "Dieses Judentum muss vernichtet werden." (This Jewry must be annihilated).

After having shown these rushes at the Führer’s dinner-table on October 28 - where everybody according to his diary were deeply schocked, Goebbels went to Lodz to see for himself on October 31. Again he was schocked and wrote in his diary, that the Jewish Question was more a task for the surgeon than a humanitarian one. He most probably brought with him his script-writer, Eberhard Taubert, and a very loyal cameraman, Erich Stoll, to make supplementary recordings. Some of the shots in the final version definitely has a different, more manipulated recording-tecnique than the rest of the ghetto scenes (use of distorting lense, angle and light). One example is the trade during services in the synagogue, another the change of Ostjuden to "civilized" Jews in western European clothes.

Just a note about my efforts to identify shots by weather. The ghetto scenes have partly sunshine, partly clouds before the sun. The weather report from Lodz had disappeared throughout the war, but the meteorologists could reconstruct a general survey of the weather in Lodz between October 11 and 13. The city lay on the border between a major high pressure to the south-east and a major low pressure in the north-west, i.e. I could not use my observations concerning weather in the different shots to anything construtive. I was, however, later able to find some shots, which derived from earlier Newsreels.

A handbook of the Propaganda Ministry from 1940 gave me the answer to where the other film clips came from: They were stock-shots from the Reichsfilmarchive. It even gave the clue to why some shots occured again and again in other "documentaries". The archive had a catalogue over clips, organized by political contents.

I then looked through a lot of films at the Filmdepartment of Bundesarchiv - at that time in Koblenz - and could identify these stock shots, used in "Der ewige Jude". Later I have been able to supplement my knowledge in the former GDR film archive. The two have now merged and are now situated in Berlin.

My last visit to Berlin also solved a major problem. According to a review of a very early version, the film contained the notorius comparison between Jews and rats. On the other hand Hippler later had claimed that the rats had been recorded by Erich Stoll towards the end of the Production. A former Eastern German archivist told me, that the rat clips derived from an information film "Fight the rats", which had been produced in 1938. His source was the director of this film.

Then suddenly, it all made sense, which was corroborated through an analysis of the texture of the single shots. There are two layers in this sequence. First Goebbels and Hipplwe used existing footage, but because they lacked "convincing" visual shots, Erich Stoll made supplementary footage with the crowd of rats and the rats running into the camera. This observation is only one of many of the same kind, which documents, how the film became more and more explicit in its hate message during the production.

Now the still-photos were to be identified. This happened mostly during the time, where I searched for the ideological roots of the spoken commentary. The Royal Library in Copenhagen has a department for Jewish Studies, which collected antisemitica during the 30’s and 40’s - and because of the Danish collaboration with Germany, it was never confiscated. It was and still is simply a treasury for a researcher like me - and it made me aware of the way, how Goebbels and Taubert had worked out the concept and the script.

In November 1937 an exhibition called "Der ewige Jude" in Munich was opened as part of the growing visualization of Nazi ideology. The film was originally simply conceived as a filmic multiplication of this exhibition. The Royal Library of Copenhagen had the booklet to the exhibition, which was given out by Hans Diebow and it contained a lot of the pictures, I was looking for.

The Royal Library also had many copies of the book "Die Juden in Deutschland", which was a socalled "scientific" report on the Jewish Question and also had given many ideas to the different topics, statistics etc. in the film. This book came out in revised editions each year and was published by the Institut zum Studien der Judenfrage, which had been created by Eberhard Taubert in 1934.

Through an analysis of the Nazi antisemitic propaganda in the Royal Library, I could identify allmost the sources for the rest of the contents of "Der ewige Jude" - and because of its alledgedly "scientific" appearance, I also got the clues of how to evaluate the truth in the claims. Because I could come very far with some parts of the film, I decided to try to crack it all in a systematic way, which - to my knowledge - has never been done before. This is the main reason, why it has taken 25 mad years to complete the source-critical edition, which came out two years ago at the Institute for the Scientific Film in Göttingen.

Has it been worth the effort?

I have asked myself this question many time, when I tried to uncover the strangest kind of evidence in far-fetched disciplines. What do you e.g. do, when you have read a lot of books on the writer Emil Ludvig and you have found no clue to the reason for a sound clip, where he speaks German, but the surroundings seem to be Anglo-American?

You write a letter to the leading authority pn Ludwig, who can give you no answer, but nevertheless helped you by sending the adress of his son in Switzerland. And it turns out that you get a photocopy of Emil Ludvig’s diary, explaining the whole thing: Ludvig was honoured with a doctoral degree at Rutgers University on June 5, 1931.

I don’t know, whether it has been worth the effort, but I certainly do hope so, because I think I have proven the principal neccesity for historians to make such kinds of time-consuming and very difficult filmanalysis.

My research project started as a purely methodological task, given to me by my Professor, who wanted paedagogical examples for his book on film and history. In my first summary I compared the opinions of the film historians, who always have claimed that the film was intended as propaganda for the Holocaust, with that of contemporary historians, who base their opinion of the Genesis of the Holocaust on written evidence.

I concluded, that for chronological reason the film could not have been deliberate propaganda for the mass killing of Jews and I set off to demonstrate, that the opinions of the film history must have been based on hindsight. Nothing in the film itself could be used as arguments for this notion.

However, I constantly got more and more problems to re-explain certain details. The film is constructed down to the very last detail. The makers have been almost "scientific" in the way they had used their sources. Nothing happens in this film, which has not been explicitly accepted by Hitler and Goebbels, who had to recut it several times in order to please Hitler. The ritual slaughter made Goebbels express a explicit wish of the annihilation of the Jews, when he saw for the first time - and it is clear from my reconstruction of the development of the film that "Der ewige Jude" got stronger and more hateful all the time during the production. We know that Hitler loved films and we have a lot of evidence concerning other films, which have had strong influence on him. In short: The more I tried to find evidence against the thesis, put forward by the film historians, the more I ended up with finding documentation and elementary arguments, which suggested an intimate connection between "Der ewige Jude" and the decision-making process behind the Holocaust.

Just having written an article for Historical Journal for Film, Radio and Television in 1991 (came out in 1992), I had one month with Serbian and one month with Croatian Television. My interest for propaganda made me watch a lot, and my wife - who speaks Serbo-Croatic fluently - translated some of it for me. However, even without her help it was easy to compare the whole programming mix and the individual programes etc. with the Nazi filmproduction, which I knew so well.

It was schocking to see, how nothing really had changed - and suddenly by seeing for myself I understood the impact of "produced reality" in reality-like media like film and television. This is a neccessary condition for the process of making people believe that they are doing something good for their society, when they exterminate the enemy, who is dehumanized by this form of strong emotional propaganda.

The only difference between modern genocidal television and the Nazi film version of "Der ewige Jude" was, that the ultimate icon for dehumanization in Serbia and Croatia is mutilated bodies, whereas "Der ewige Jude" uses the ritual slaughter scenes for this purpose, before Hitler promulgates, what is going to happen with the Jews.

I simply had to believe my own analysis and I simply had to start to use the production of the film as the chronological structure for a new interpretation of the decision-making process. I have promised Jim not to go any deeper into the results of my latest research into this. However, if any of you should be able to read Danish, I have written a thick book in Danish, which has just been transformed to a major TV-series, intended for the international market. And you are, of course, wellcome to ask me some questions concerning this afterwards.

Instead I would like to raise some principal questions with regards to the film "Der ewige Jude". Goebbels’ diaries documents, that the decision to make an over-all antisemitic propagandafilm in the style of an extended Newsreel was taken on October 4, 1939, just after having seen the latest newsreel, which contained a longer story on Jewish life in Polish ghettos. Goebbels outlined his concept on October 5 to Fritz Hippler, Head of the Film Department, and Eberhard Taubert, who was an expert for anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic propaganda. Goebbels wrote in his diary, that the film should be finnished within 3 or 4 weeks. It lasted much longer, because the first public screening took place on November 28, 1940.

There are many reasons for this delay:

First of all Goebbels had underestimated the whole project. Everyone, who has worked on a major documentary, knows, how one again and again has to cut and recut and rewrite and cut again and so on. I certainly do, as it has taken us four years to complete the TV-series on Hitler.

Equally important for the delay was, that the Fuehrer wanted to survey the film during the production and ordered several changes before he gave his endorsment. This apparantly happened on May 20, 1940 - the day, where German troops reached the English Channel - and thus making the victory over France a matter of one month. The script to the film was then sent to Goebbels’ arch-enemy, Alfred Rosenberg, who only had few comments (probably because he knew that it had already been accepted by Hitler).

A further delay came, because Goebbels wanted to launch a feature-film "Jud Süss" at the same time. The feature film should arouse anti-Semitic feelings, which then were to be "proven" by the socalled "documentary". The two films were also intended for different audience: Jew Süss for the general public - and Der ewige Jude for those, who were already anti-Semites or part of the Nazi establishment. The task of "Der ewige Jude" was to mobilize and to legitimize.

It took, however, time to produce "Jud Süss" - and the film was finally finnished in late August. It was shown for the first time in Venice on September 6, 1940, where it was acclaimed to be the best film of the film festival..

Two days later, Goebbels screened "Der ewige Jude" as part of an enlarged press conference. He talked about the need to make new and stronger warpropaganda. The whole top-leadership of The Third Reich was present. However, there seems to have been a strong reaction against showing the ritual slaughter in public. After a week - he must have contacted Hitler, but there is no mentioning of this in his diary - he decided that the film should be shown in public cinemas, but in two versions. One without slaughtering for women and children during the afternoon - and the original one for men in the evenings.

Finally, on November 28, 1940, the film had its opening night. The Press had been asked to write big articles on the film on the political pages, not - as usual - on the filmpages. Fritz Hippler gave an interview in the radio, where he concluded with Hitler’s notorius prophecy, at the same time underlining, that the precondition for the fulfillment of the prophecy - the war - had occurred.

And Hitler himself started to endorse this interpretation by refering to this prophecy from January 30, 1941 and later again and again.

On January 20, 1941, the SD wrote a report on the reception of the film. From this we learn, that the general population did not want to see it because of its "realistic presentation" of the Jews. The report also points to the fact that there had been an oral propaganda against the film because of the slaughtering scenes. The audiences had primarily been political activists. From Goebbels’ diary we know that he was pleased with the report, although it clearly indicated that only few had seen the film. Goebbels knew well, that effects depend on what kind of people, you reach. And Der ewige Jude was intended for the future perpetrators - as well as a warning to the rest of the German population not to interfer with businesses of the state.

Goebbels also believed so much in the effectiveness of the film that it was obligatory for the HJ at their Filmfeierstunden. During my different showings of the film in Germany I have met several, who can remember it and tell about how and when they saw it. One of them came from the Sudetenland, where the whole village was forced to see both Jew Süss and Der ewige Jude. He could not remember the year, but he could never forget the feeling he had, as he stepped out from the cinema and into spring with flowers, sun, humming bees etc. It must have been Spring 1942. Other earlier members of the HJ, however, swear, that they had never seen the film.

The film was also shown to the Wehrmacht and to the Einsatzgruppen. A dane, who lived in Berlin to mid-43, told me, that he saw it in early summer this year in a cinema at Kurfürstendamm - apparantly as ideological preparation to the deportation of the Berlin Jews.

Goebbels also had a Dutch and a French version produced - and in connection with the planned trial against Grynzpan as part of the cover-up around the Wannsee-Conference he even produced an international version in German, where significantly Hitler’s prophecy was cut out.

After the war it was forbidden to show "Der ewige Jude" in public, and the Allies took it back to their own country after the two German states were established. Kennedy, visiting Berlin i 1963, gave the rights back as a symbolic gesture: Now the Federal Republic of Germany had become a well-functioning democracy and could also take care of this black chapter of its history. The rights are now with the Federal Archives, which has transferred the users’ right to a state-owned company, Transit-Film in Munich. It still belongs to the socalled Forbidden Films - and television companies are only allowed to use up to 3 min. of the film (and are of course obliged to pay around 30 DM pr. meter 35 mm film).

The rights for the universities has been transferred to the Institute for the Scientific Film in Göttingen, which rents out the film to university teachers. Showings outside universities demand a dispensation, which is given, if the arrangement is a closed one and part of the "political education" - and if the speaker is recognized as an expert in this field.

And yet, it is easy to obtain the film on video, if one wants to have it. Since mid-70’s it can be ordered from neo-Nazi postal boxes. And it can be bought openly from a company in Chicago, called International Historic Films. Transit Film has tried to stop it, but in vain. The way the compagny sells it, means that it is covered by The First Ammendment.

For many reasons I consider "Der ewige Jude" on the whole to be no less than one of the most important sources to the history of the 20. century at all. I am therefore doing my best to make the film - or at least part of it - available for teaching history. The Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung has bought a special edition of the source-critical book and distributed it along its normal lines. Next year there will be a conference about "Enemy pictures" arranged by the Bundeszentrale as well as the German Association of Teachers in History, based on "Der ewige Jude" and my didactical experiences of using the film to teach not only Nazism and the Holocaust, but also ethics and the impact of media-produced reality.

The discussion after Goldhagen’s "Hitler’s Willing Executioners" has once more demonstrated the public need for understanding, how the unbelivable could happen - how ordinary citizen like you and me could particpate in genocide. The support among ordinary Germans to-day to Goldhagen’s thesis also has demonstrate the need for historians to communicate with the public on the communicative conditions of the audience. One is the reasons for his commercial success is that the book is written in a very personal and dedicated way. As historians, we have to compete with a lot of other things in order to attract the attention of our audience at all.

This is perhaps my strongest argument for a more active use of the film "Der ewige Jude". The film experience gives us an emotional X-ray of the legitimation of the Holocaust and challenges us individually with the uncomforting moral question: What would you have done? How do you react to attrocities to-day, which you can follow almost live on television?

"Der ewige Jude" is probably the most efficient propagandafilm ever made. It has also become the blueprint for other ruthless propaganda makers in their way of motivating ordinary citizen to genocidal behaviour. Therefore I would like to close my paper with an offer to you of establishing some kind of cooperation in order to find the best way to use this knowledge as one little step in the struggle for a more human and humanistic world.

Thank you very much for your attention!