Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/01/10

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: RE: [Leica] Leni Riefenstahl Site
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:27:46 -0500
References: <3C3DCC98.2D7F2FDF@markrabiner.com>

At 12:39 PM 1/10/02 -0500, B. D. Colen wrote:
>She WASN'T EXPOSED TO THE LATTER? Give us all a break - Poor Germans, they
>didn't know what was going on, they were just duped by that evil Adolph who
>pretended to love the Jews while he was secretly killing them. When does
>this shit end? Go do a little reading, Mark. 

BD

Calm down a bit.  Riefenstahl was a flibbertigibbet of the time.  She was
and is an artistic genius but she did not delve too deeply into the
background of those who bought her work.  Goebbels hated her and saw her as
a lightweight who held no ideological commitment to the regime -- unlike,
for instance, his evaluation of Curt Jurgens, of whom I have never heard
you say a bad word.

Speer related that he SHOULD have known the specifics of the camps and
COULD have known this, but that he held off as an associate, who did visit
the camps, advised him to ask no questions.  And, as he testified at
Nuremburg, this made him as culpable as those who were willing participants
in horror and vileness.  In this sense, Riefenstahl is culpable.  But there
is no evidence that she was ever even accorded the opportunity to ask.  She
was, in the end, at the artistic pole of Hitler's entourage, and not at the
political or the military.  (By Hitler's order, for instance, Keitel was
forbidden any knowledge of the Final Solution;  his Nuremburg verdict
acknowledges this.)

In other words, let us keep things in perspective.  Riefenstahl is, in the
end, a very minor player in a very big cast of characters, many evil, many
nasty, many simply moral eunuchs -- for instance, have YOU ever read much
on Eichmann?  A typical bureaucrat, who applied for and got a job.  The job
happened to be shipping folks off to die but, to Eichmann, it was a job.
His final rank was Lieutenant Colonel, a rather lowly rank for the evil he
did.  But, to him, it was just a job, without any moral side to it at all.
In another circumstance, he might have been the Postmaster of bad Kreuznach
or the superintendent of a minor rail line.

No one of us condones evil, but evil comes in many shades.  I have yet to
hear you, BD, condemn the photographers who have cheerfully worked to
advance Communism, for instance.  Again, let us keep things in perspective.

Marc



msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html

In reply to: Message from Mark Rabiner <mark@markrabiner.com> (Re: [Leica] Leni Riefenstahl Site)