January 13, 2004

An Old Nazi Slut That Must Not Die

From January 2 until January 10, 2004 the Deutsche Filmmuseum in Frankfurt/Main performed a serial show of films "In memoriam Leni Riefenstahl", which was announced as follows:
Everything seems to have been said already about Germany's most-hated, most-admired and most-imitated female director. In January we will show one of the two main pieces of Riefenstahl's oevre and a documentary about her life and work."
The documentary from 1993, so the announcement, is "highly valuable mainly as a Riefenstahl self-documentation, who reports about herself and her work. In case you don't know: Leni Riefenstahl was the "alte Nazischlampe" (Henryk M. Broder) who got as extras for her film "Tiefland" Sinti and Roma (European gypsies) from Austrian concentration camps who were, having outstayed their usefulness after the shooting of the film, sent to the death camps in the East (mainly Auschwitz) where almost all of them were killed. Leni herself died of old age last year, some time after she'd celebrated her 100th birthday, still going strong and in style and with a crowd of adoring followers. And no, NOT Nazis, just admirers of her oeuvre, of course. There are no Nazis in Germany, never had been, never will.

On January 10 in Frankfurt, the police was forced to remove a couple of protesters so that the show could go on.

Source: Presseinfo des Fördervereins Sinti und Roma from January 12, 2004.

Update:
Charlotte Opfermann from Texas sent the following additional information:
She protested loudly after WWII that she 'had nothing against Jews or Gypsies and knew nothing about the National Socialist extermination programs'. She had been Hitler's, Goering's and Goebbels' regular escort for dinner and opera outings. Her denazification procedure was a total success: She was categorized as a Mitlaeufer (camp follower) without any responsibility for Nazi atrocities.

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