Horror Show

A nation searches its soul

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a notorious workaholic, took time off from preparing for the current budget debate to watch the show. So did Opposition Leader Helmut Kohl. In all, an estimated 14 million West Germans, plus 3 million people in areas of East Germany tuned in last week for Holocaust, the American-made fictional account of Hitler's extermination of 6 million Jews. As nine regional television networks prepared to air the four-part docu-drama neo-Nazis torched an old synagogue in Essen and bombers demolished a television transmission tower near Koblenz and a telephone relay station near Muenster. Newspapers carried debates on the accuracy of the series and whether a fictional version of Hitler's ultimate atrocity should be shown.

Since its broadcast by NBC in the U S nine months ago, Holocaust has been shown in eleven countries, including Israel, Britain and Japan. But the program posed a ticklish dilemma for television executives of publicly financed television stations in West Germany, where many people would rather bury the Nazi past Both ARD and ZDF, the two national networks, declined to purchase the show They cited reports from West German correspondents in the U.S. that Holocaust which focuses on the suffering of a Jewish family and the rise of a young SS officer, verged "dangerously close to soap opera." Eventually WDR, largest of West Germany's regional channels, bought the show for $500,000, then arranged for other stations to join in a simultaneous broadcast that covered the country. Explained Program Director Guenter Rohrbach: "A production on this subject cannot be ignored in West Germany, of all places."

From the beginning, broadcasters feared that the series would be viewed as either too banal to be truly educational, or too anti-German to be effective. To counterbalance some of Holocaust's technical errors, ARD screened before the first installment a 90-minute documentary called Endloesung (final solution), using actual films of Hitler's rise and the grim reality of the death camps Stations broadcasting Holocaust set up telephone lines over which viewers could call in to panels of experts and survivors of Nazi persecution.

Initially, many viewers felt that the series, which had been dubbed in German, unnecessarily reopened old wounds. But then came a cathartic outpouring of soul searching, similar to the one that emerged in the U.S. after Roots was shown. Young people were appalled to be reminded that many of their elders had not protested the slaughter. "How and why could this sort of thing happen?" asked one horrified young viewer. "Where were the churches? Why did they not protest? Why was there no resistance?" Those who had lived through Hitler's reign reproached themselves. Said a Frankfurt book salesman: "I'm forever ashamed of my generation. How could we allow a beast like Hitler to come to power?"

Many callers demanded to know why West Germans themselves had not produced such a film. Replied Political Scientist Eugen Kogon, an expert on the Nazi era: "We would not be capable because we are not imaginative enough to make such a film." At Holocaust's conclusion, most West Germans agreed that the broadcast had been a public service. Though a few mistakes may exist," said Schmidt, "the film is correct; it compels one to critical and moral reflection. "

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