Film Review: "The Lucky Star" 1980

As it's Yom HaShoah today I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about one of the best Holocaust films I have ever seen, suitable for all ages but especially good for children as it shows no explicit scenes of gore that would frighten children. Nevertheless, the film transmits an exceptionally powerful and haunting message that has certainly left an impression upon me, even after all these years.

The film stars Brett Marx as a Dutch teenager called David Goldberg who is obsessed with the American Wild West, and Rod Steiger who plays a German colonel named "Gluck".

Now bear in mind that this review is based on my memory from about 25 years ago so forgive me if I have some details wrong.

The Germans invade Holland. We first see David in his attic bedroom full of American Wild West film posters. He is wearing a cowboy hat and has toy cowboy guns in his hands, play shooting at an imaginary enemy. We here screams from down stairs and sounds of boots running up the stairs. David escapes through the window and runs over the Dutch rooftops. Eventually he escapes to the countryside and makes his way to a small village where he helps out in a local farm. The whole village knows that he is Jewish (I'm not sure how) and when the Germans come they insist that all Jews wear the Yellow star.

The mayor of the village calls David into his office and with trepidation and shame, asks David to wear this yellow star on his chest. David looks at the star and within his fantasy world, understands that the town has just made him sheriff! He walks out wearing the star with pride. The next stage is to find himself a sheriff's office and Jail and after that, to find himself a real outlaw to lock up! Obviously it will have to be the leader of the gang of outlaws in the town and that would be colonel Gluck, head of German forces in that area.

Through a daring and naïve plan, David succeeds in capturing the colonel and puts him in jail. So begins a series of conversations between a German officer and a Jewish boy. After the initial fruitless threats, Gluck soon realises that it will do no good as David is completely immersed within his fantasy world and believes that he really is the sheriff with a criminal in his jail. The conversations that entail on morality are surreal yet sobering for the officer who gradually comes to realise that he is in fact a murderer and a criminal. Who is really living a fantasy?

I won't spoil the film for anyone who might get to see it in the future but I will say that like all good cowboy films, it ends with a dramatic one on one gun fight.

The only review I found on the Internet was a New York Times article from 1982 where the reviewer completely slates it. Her major critizism revolves around the confusion as to whether the film is supposed to be a Holocaust drama, a comedy or a musical. I actually don't remember the songs in the film but I trust the reviewer when she says that there were.

Sadly the film is completely unavailable today on any format. Doing a search on Amazon or IMDB sites have no links to where one can purchase this film. I used to have a VHS copy of the film which I recorded in the mid 1980s when it was shown on British Television. (I cannot remember the channel). I donated the tape to the Jewish Video Library in Balfour House in London. I assume they still have it somewhere (?)

Chain email: Holocaust Remembrance Day - May 2

Just received this chain email twice this morning.

What I find distasteful about this email is the fact that the author thinks that G-d will be somehow impressed if the reader waits 20 secs until he closes the browser! Then we are informed that G-d will be even more impressed and consider it the fulfillment of some mitzvah if we send this email to all our Jewish friends in order to reach the figure of 6 million before May 2nd.

The first thing to say is that this is a chain email, just like for instance, the famous free Nokia phones offer that tells you that if you send it to 10 friends then somehow Nokia will know about this and send you a free phone. These chain emails rely on a common Internet myth that somehow, all these emails can be traced back to the sender and somehow counted. They can't! In fact, the only one who would ever know how many of these silly emails were actually forwarded to Jews who, (according to the "halacha"), also had to wait 20 secs before sending them to all their Jewish contacts (to fulfil the mitzvah according to all the deiyos no doubt), is G-d and as I have already said, I would guess that, out of all the mitzvos that Hashem has given the Jewish people to perform, this gesture would not fit under any of them.

I have a policy of never forwarding any chain emails but had the email asked us to say some Tehillim or to mention a Holocaust victim or even Jewish town in our tephilos or even to learn a single pasuk from anywhere in Tanach then I'd understand the thought behind it. However, getting people to forward this just to show to G-d that there are 6 million Jews who know how to mouse click is actually quite pathetic don't you think? I would advice not to forward this email.

Victims or Persecutors?

I was amazed at the amount of Catholics who wrote into The Jerusalem Post claiming that the Catholics were also Nazi victims in response to an article about an anti-Semitic Holocaust denying Polish bishop called Tadeusz Pieronek. This is the same lie as that contemptible chain-email about remembering the six million Jews and the 10 million Xtians and 1,900 Catholic priests that I wrote about here.

In fact, most of Hitler's aids including Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hoess, Julius Streicher, Fritz Thyssen, Klaus Barbie, and Franz Von Papen were all practicing Catholics. Most of the SS who ran the death camps were practicing Catholics.

Just do a Google for "Catholic Nazi" and see all the photos of Catholic priests in Nazi salutes. Catholics were victims like the Jews? Disgusting, obscene! They were the major persecutors!

Catholic priests accompanied the german troops

There were of course many Catholics who risked their lives and were murdered by the Nazis for trying to hide Jews. These were the exception though. They did not do this because of their Catholic faith but despite it.

One chain email with a hidden agenda

In the past four years I along with millions of others have received this chain email more than once.

Some idiot even translated it into Hebrew. 

 

בשביל סבא וסבתא וההורים שלנו והמשפחות שלהם השבוע באנגליה , הסירו כל אזכור על השואה מתוכניות הלימוד של בתי הספר , בטענה שהדבר פוגע ב אוכלוסיה המוסלמית , המכחישה את קיום השואה . זהו סימן לבאות של האסון שבהדרגה פוקד את העולם , עדות מבהילה של הקלות שבה המדינות נכנעות תחתיו . עברו יותר מ -60 שנה מסיום מלחמת העולם השנייה באירופה . האימייל הזה נשלח במטרה ליצור שרשרת זיכרון לזכרם של 6 מליון יהודים , 20 מיליון רוסים , 10 מיליון נוצרים , 1900 כמרים קתוליים , שנרצחו , נאנסו , נשרפו , הורעבו למוות , והושפלו על ידי אותם אלה שחיפשו דרך אחרת ! עכשיו , יותר מאי פעם , על רקע מאמציהם של איראן ואחרים , שהצהירו על השואה כ ' אגדה ', הכרחי ביותר לעשות כל שניתן כדי שהעולם אף פעם לא ישכח .. האימייל הזה צריך להגיע לפחות ל -40 מיליון אנשים בכל העולם . הצטרפו אלינו וקחו חלק בשרשרת הזיכרון , עזרו להפיץ אותה ברחבי העולם

Many of you have been duped into forwarding this email to all your friends and as a consequence have become victims of anti-Semitism. Yes, you read that correctly, I believe that the chain email is anti-Semitic.

First of all I want to explain that according to the chainmail internet sites, it is a fact that 95% of these chain emails you receive (identified by the line near the bottom which says something like "Send this to all your friends") are nonsense and should not be forwarded. This means that anyone who does forward these chain-emails along is either or both (a) responsible for sending false information (b) made to look very foolish when someone writes back telling them that what they sent to everyone on their contact list was a bunch of baloney!

Some general advice about chain-emails:

1. If you cannot be bothered to check their validity then DON'T FORWARD THEM!

2. If you insist on forwarding them, make sure you check the validity of the contents on a chain-email site such as http://www.snopes.com/.

This will prevent you looking really stupid.

So, taking my own advice, lets look up this email:

You go into www.snopes.com and type the keywords of the email into the Search field. You'll almost definitely find it in their database. In this case it is found here:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust.asp

So we see that the basis for the email is untrue!

The second and much more troubling problem is that this was written by Xtians not Jews and they have an agenda which you no doubt completely missed.

Many Xtians believe that their religion supersedes Judaism. They believe that they are the new chosen people because the Jewish people did not accept G-d's true Messiah when he came. This is another topic entirely but the idea that their half man/half god pagan man, Yoshki Poshki was the Jewish Messiah is absolutely ridiculous and that is why the Jewish people rejected him then and that is why we reject him now! Therefore the Xtians have a theological nightmare when it comes to the Holocaust.

Why is it that the Germans chose to single out the Jews in the Holocaust? Well it's true that they also murdered Gypsies as well as homosexuals and handicapped. However they chose to uniquely identify their greatest enemy in all their Manifestos, starting with Mein Kampf, as the Jew. Their intention was to wipe out the entire Jewish people. The Final Solution conference was directed exclusively at the Jews.

If this is the case then the Xtians have a serious theological problem. You see, the Nazis are considered today the definition of  poor evil. When evil comes into this world it should seek out the source of good in order to destroy it. The Nazis singled out the Jewish people. Moreover, after the Jews experienced this unique suffering, why did Hashem allow the Jews to return to the land of Israel after a gap of 2,000 years? All this must mean that we are still Hashem's chosen people and therefore Xianity is false!

In order to sweep this problem under the carpet the Xtians have to completely down play the importance of the Holocaust. This is why the email mentions along with the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Xtians and 1,900 Catholic priests.

This sentence is a disgusting anti-Semitic statement.

20 million Russians died mainly from Stalin's hand, not Hitler! The ones that were killed were killed just like the Europeans, that is, because there was a war going on! They were bombed or shot. There was no policy of genocide. They died because that’s what war does. It kills soldiers and civilians.

10 million Xtians is a meaningless figure which can include not only Europeans and Russians but also the Nazis themselves. They were also Xtians killed by the Allied forces!

Now what about the statement of 1,900 Catholic priests? There were Buddhist priests and Hindu priests also killed but none of them were singled out for a specific policy of genocide. There was no policy to search out and murder every Catholic priest either. In fact the Vatican in Rome continued "business as usual" throughout the war. To lump the priests in with the victims of the Holocaust is frankly obscene and morally repugnant.

The real heinous purpose of this sentence is to remove the uniqueness of the Jews who were murdered by including them in a list of people who died as a result of war and revolution. The 20 million Russians and 10 million Xtians figures are designed to show you that the 6 million Jews figure is small in comparison and therefore not unique or even particularly important along side much larger figures.

But six million Jews were murdered because the Nazis singled them out for special treatment. Their programme was to exterminate every single Jew. To illustrate this: against the advice of his generals, Hitler pushed for the invasion of Russia. Why? Because Russia contained the greatest concentration of Jews! Murdering Jews was a major component of German war planning.

One more point. Who actually did the murdering?

The majority of German SS officers were Xtians, (with a minority being Muslim). Most were Protestant Xtians, the rest were Catholic Xtians. Many of these officers would describe themselves as religious people, yet they had no problem murdering Jews. The reason for this is because the church had preached hatred towards Jews for almost 2,000 years. Most Xtians simply saw the Final Solution as an extension of their Xtian belief. Only a few refused.

This email was written by Xtians with an agenda to belittle the Holocaust and Jews and by sending this email on, you have become a victim of anti-Semitism.

The proper response and the greatest revenge for the murder of 6,000,000 Jews including 1,500,000 children is to have as many Jewish children as possible.

Every Jewish child that is brought into this world means the Nazis failed.

"Take Revenge" found after the war on the wall of the camp, written in blood, Kovna, Lithuania