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Like many journalists, sometimes the best stories you have to tell, are the ones you avoid, that force you to discuss uncomfortable moments in your life and expose others -- going to those places and writing about them sometimes produces great writing, great stories (and in the case of the Judd Apatow gang, great comedies --but that's another story). Here, Collins has written a wonderful piece that deserves to be read far and wide, and she deserves kudos for doing do. Brava! and, more to the point, Mazel Tov!
Abby Mann, of "Judgment in Nuremberg" fame died this week. I interviewed him in 2005 on the occasion of a stage production of Judgment in Long Beach, at his home in Beverlywood. He was a writer who never lacked material, who never suffered from "Agism" who was being hired by studios in his 70s and 80s, who was always working on the next project. Here is the column I wrote:
"Old Lessons Never Die" (Abby Mann's "Judgment" in Long Beach) 6-17-05
If, as the bard wrote, "All the world's a stage," then let me direct you to a current production that, though seeming of another time, and another era, and based on a film more than 40 years old, offers enduring truths that seem particularly relevant to current events.
"Judgment At Nuremberg" Abby Mann's courtroom drama about the post-World War II trial of Nazi-era German Judges is having its Southern California stage premiere this Friday, June 17 at the International City Theater in Long Beach.
If you have never watched the film, or have not seen it in many years, you should head down to Long Beach or at the very least to your local movie rental store. As Abby Mann said, when we met recently at his Los Angeles home, "unfortunately, the play is very timely." - which says as much about "Judgment at Nuremberg" as it does about Abby Mann.
Mann was born in 1927, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant and was raised in east Pittsburgh in a tough predominantly Catholic working class neighborhood surrounded by steel workers and their children who were also destined for the steel factories.
Beginning in the late 1940s and throughout the next decade, Mann wrote dramas for such anthology TV series such as "Studio One," "Robert Montgomery Presents"," Cameo Theater," "Goodyear Playhouse Theater," "Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Presents," "Matinee Theater" and "Playhouse 90."
"Judgment at Nuremberg" first appeared on Playhouse 90, directed by George Roy Hill (best known today as the director of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting") and launched Mann's Hollywood career. The 1961 film version directed by Stanley Kramer, received 11 Oscar nominations and won Oscars for Mann (screenplay) and Maximillian Schell as the defense attorney, and featured star turns by Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland..
Since "Judgment," Mann has continued over more than four decades to write movies, films for television, mini-series and television series that have defied conventional wisdom and spoken out for those whom the larger political forces would seek to ignore. Among his works, "A Child Is Waiting" (1963) discussed the treatment of mentally challenged children and the 1973 TV movie, "The Marcus-Nelson murders" revealed how a young black man was coerced into confessing to a rape-murder he did not commit. Based on a true story, the real defendant was released after the program aired. But the program became famous for still another reason - it launched a series based on the lead detective, named Kojak.
Mann has never shirked controversy, penning, "The Atlanta Murders" which explored the trial of Wayne Williams; "King" (which Mann directed), which examined the possibility of a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King; "Murderers among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story"; "Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser story," as well as the films "Report to the Comissioner," and "Love and War" about Holocaust survivor Jack Eisner. But perhaps one of the most controversial of Mann's work was "Indictment: The McMartin Case" (which he wrote with his wife Myra) for HBO - about an Orange County couple charged with child abuse -- and the lack of evidence against them. On the first day of the film's production, Mann's home was burned to the ground. A case of arson that, to this day, remains unsolved.
Mann continues to be engaged by difficult issues. Currently he is working with the ex-Governor of Illinois George Ryan on a book and screenplay about his decision to close death row and abandon the death penalty in his State.
Still of all his screenplays, the one that remains evergreen is "Judgment." Mann has been surprised at how much more intense certain scenes seem on the stage than they did in the film. He commends the Long Beach production directed by Shashin Desai and all of the actors, particularly the actress who plays Jewish Holocaust survivor Irene Hoffman Wallner "better than Judy Garland."
"Judgment at Nuremberg" asks questions such as: Is it right for the victors to sit in judgment of the vanquished? What are individuals in general and government employees in specific to do when their government passes laws that appear to break with the very legal conventions they were sworn to uphold. What is the individual's responsibility?
Mann recalled that the genesis of "Judgment at Nuremberg" occurred at a party in New York City where he met an attorney named Abe Pomerantz, who was a government attorney at Nuremberg (Pomerantz went on to become a legendarily successful securities class action attorney). Mann confessed that he didn't know much about the trials. Pomerantz said that they were having trouble getting judges of any stature to hear the cases. Mann had no idea of the extent of the trials in Nuremberg, or even that there were trials of doctors, judges and businessmen. But he was curious. Pomerantz suggested he meet with with Telford Taylor, who had served as assistant counsel to lead Prosecutor Robert Jackson during the initial Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leadership and then succeeded him after Jackson resigned the position in 1946.
"Taylor was a very unusual guy," Mann recalled. "He had a lot of presence. He was one of those guys who were the first ones into the concentration camps and that stayed with him."
It bothered Taylor that, after a certain point, the United States no longer wanted to pursue the trials because they needed Germany on their side in the Cold War. Mann recalled that Taylor got him interested when he said, "I don't know whether this is too austere, but there was a trial of Judges [Taylor was referring to The Justice Trial, as it was called, US. v. Alsotter]. It was fascinating, American judges sitting in judgment of German judges." Mann became so compelled that he left a $1000-a-week job to write the screenplay on a $500 advance."
What makes "Judgment" so powerful to this day is the complexity of the characters. No one is without flaws and shifting loyalties. Presiding Judge Dan Haywood, played in the movie by Spencer Tracy is a widower from Maine, a judge who was at the top of no one's list. He is the model of probity but he is subject to various pressures and influences: Will he listen to the American politican and his fellow Judge's suggestion that in light of the cold war he should go easy on the Germans? Will he confine himself to the narrow question of whether the judges were just following the laws as the Nazis had written them? Does he accept the contention of his household staff and of a beautiful General's widow that the average German did not really know what was going on?
By the same token we come to wonder: Is the prosecutor too obsessed, too influenced by what he witnessed liberating the death camps? Is the defense attorney just doing his job, preying on the witnesses' weakness? Is the defendant Jannings a good man, trying his best to stay loyal to his country as it was caught up in an evil scheme, or did he commit evil himself?
In the film version, Burt Lancaster played "Janning," a German Judge who appears to be of the highest intellect and integrity, who refuses to be lumped with the "party hacks" and who at court finally rises to make a statement that he was "worse than any of them because he knew what they were and went along with them."
But it is the power of Mann's drama that even Janning is unwilling to accept full responsibility. After being sentenced, he asks to meet with Haywood in his cell. Then Haywood tells Jannings "what you said in the courtroom -it needed to be said." Jannings hopes the Judge understands that Jannings had no idea that that Nazi's actions were leading to the death chambers.
Haywood responds, in one of the most famous and chilling lines:
"Herr Janning. It came to that the first time you sentenced to death a man you knew to be innocent."
"A country is not a rock, or a mask," Mann told me, "it's what it stands for."
In "Judgment," he explained, "Patriotism is the antagonist."
A subject still with us: The recent votes of France and the Netherlands against the EU constitution clearly show that Nationalism is still a potent force.
Although it would be wrong to compare any current government to that of the Nazis, by focusing on "the Justice trial," Mann does make us wonder what we would (or do) trade off or remain silent about in exchange for our freedom and our lives of comfort and security.
One can not view "Judgment at Nuremberg" and not think about Guantanomo Bay, Abu Gharid and the Patriot Act and consider the accomodations we make in our post-Sept. 11 world as we juggle our security concerns and military objectives with civil liberties.
"When you think of thousands of people in jail, without being able to see an attorney," Mann said, "without seeing the evidence against them, that's not the American way....The question is: How far it can go?"
"Judgment" also made me think about the recent revelation that Mark Felt, a retired deputy director of the FBI, was "Deep Throat," Woodward and Bernstein's secret source for their Watergate investigation. To me, this was a very vivid reminder that individuals can act in ways that have historic impact in the defense of their country - even those in the administration charged with enforcing the law. At the same, Felt reminds us that history is made by mortals fueled by motives high and low - and that a free press remains one of the most powerful checks on a government abusing its power.
Finally, "Judgment at Nuremberg" reminds us that our system of laws imposes an obligation to prosecute the criminals before us, an obligation to their victims and that justice must not be denied, because of either emotional or poltical reasons. Our system allows mitigation - but based on admission of guilt and expression of remorse or a justifiable defense (i.e. self-defense). This too is timely.
Nuremberg seems of another time. But it is not.
On June 30, 2005, The United States will hold hearings to deport John Demjanjuk for his war-time Nazi guard service at several concentration camps, including Sobibor, Flossenburg and Majdanek, Demjanjuk, who was also identified by Holocaust survivors as having served at the Treblinka extermination camp was denaturalized and stripped of his U.S. Citizenship (1981), ordered deported (1984), and extradited to stand trial in Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity (1986), the first person to be so charged since Adolf Eichmann in 1961. The Israel District court convicted him in 1988 and sentenced him to death (I wrote a now out-of print book about this trial). However, in 1993 the Israel Supreme, found that new evidence unearthed during the course of the appeal to Israel's Supreme Court, cast sufficient doubt as to his Treblinka service to acquit him and return him to the United States. U.S. Courts admonished the U.S. prosecutors and vacated the prior U.S. decisions. Despite this, the US Government was able to re-file their suit on the basis that Demjanjuk, who has never admitted to any wartime German collaboration, lied about his proven Nazi service and had the truth of his service been known he would never been allowed to enter this country or become an American citizen.
Demjanjuk is now 84. It is easy to say "he's an old man." Or to say "he has suffered enough," or that "we should move on," or that "what he did was so long ago, it's between him and his maker, and we should forgive." I have heard all those arguments, and you can find them all over the Web. I disagree.
I would argue that "Judgment at Nuremberg" has something to say on this issue, as well. It reminds us not to shirk out duty to remind those who commit the crimes and those who acquiesce to them of the evil of their acts, whether they know it or not, whether they acknowledge their part or not, in the name of the victims who can not speak, and for the sake of justice and the rule of law.
Forgiveness is not a magic wand - it does not relieve us of our legal obligations and moral duty. Rather forgiveness stands apart.
Even the late Pope John Paul II, whom Pope Benedict XVI has placed on the fast track to sainthood, and who visited Mehmet Ali Agca, his would-be-assassin in prison to forgive him, did not ask for the court to release him; nor was Agca allowed even a reprieve to attend the Pope's funeral. He continues to serve out his life sentence.
Much has been made of South Africa's commission for Truth and Reconciliation, as a way to "move beyond" a country's terrible history without trials.However the Commission has made clear that there can be no forgiveness, no mitigation, no reconciliation, without truth, without an admission of what one did.
"Were we deaf, dumb and blind?" Janning asks in "Judgment."
Abby Mann, in everything he writes, asks: "Are we even paying attention?"
Tom Teicholz is a film producer in Los Angeles. Everywhere else, he's an author and journalist who has written for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Interview and The Forward. His column appears every other week.
MARTHA BLUM, 94: WRITER
Pharmacist survived the Holocaust to publish her first novel at 86
All told, the Saskatoon teacher and musician wrote three books -- all in longhand and all while lying in bed. As a result, her duvet covers were forever stained with ink
REGINA -- For years, Holocaust survivor and retired pharmacist Martha Blum kept her writing to herself. Then, at 86, she published her first novel, The Walnut Tree, which tells the story of a well-to-do Jewish woman who uses her skills as a pharmacist to save her family from the Nazis.
The novel went on to be a finalist for the Canadian Booksellers Association's Ex Libris Award but lost to Alistair Macleod's masterpiece, No Great Mischief.
Mrs. Blum was born in 1913 in Czernowitz, Austria (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine). With the defeat of Germany and Austria at the end of the First World War, the city became part of Romania and remained so while Mrs. Blum was growing up.
Her family owned a large pharmaceutical plant. Her parents, Abraham and Susi Guttmann, and her older brother, Wilhelm, were all pharmacologists. Coming from a wealthy family, she was cared for by a French governess who taught her piano, as well as French.
For holidays, she was often sent to her grandfather's house in Suczawa, Austria. Mrs. Blum cherished these visits, because it was with him that she learned many practical skills, such as cooking and herding geese. Back at her parents' home, servants took care of such things.
Mrs. Blum wanted to be a doctor, but her father pressured her to study pharmacy and sent her to be schooled in Prague and later Paris. It was while she was in university in 1935 that she married a young mathematician named Richard Blum, who was also from Czernowitz.
They would have only a few happy years together before the outbreak of the Second World War. By that time, the couple had returned to Czernowitz and, being Jewish, it wasn't long before they were rounded up by the Nazis and isolated in a ghetto. Life was miserable. Sanitation was poor and many people died of disease. Those not fit for work did not receive food coupons and were left to starve.
The Blums were luckier than most. As pharmacologists, their profession was considered an essential service and they were made to work as slaves, filling the prescriptions of German soldiers.
It was this work that kept them out of the concentration camps. Even so, Mrs. Blum couldn't tolerate life in the ghetto. She and her family shared a room with 17 other families. Fed up, she marched over to the SS officer in command and refused to work unless her family was allowed to return home to Czernowitz.
Although she won the concession, they still were not safe. One day, while out walking, her husband was picked up by soldiers and sent to a work camp.
In 1944, fighting between the Soviet Union and the Germans intensified around Czernowitz and she decided to move to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. She hid aboard a train, but not before sending her husband a message. She wrote a note in the margin of a newspaper. "I'll be waiting for you," it said.
The newspaper got passed from person to person until it finally reached him at the work camp. Not long after that, the work camp was ordered closed and the officer in charge was told to shoot all the inmates. Fortunately, the officer could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he opened the gates in the middle of the night and set the men free.
Months later, after travelling all the way on foot, her husband arrived in Bucharest. It was there that Mrs. Blum started life over. She opened her own pharmacy and later gave birth to the only child she would have, Irene.
After the war, Romania was absorbed into the Soviet sphere of Communist countries. Mrs. Blum, coming from an entrepreneurial family, opposed the values of communism. In 1950, her pharmacy was confiscated and her husband made some anti-Communist statements that placed the couple on a list of undesirables. At that point, they knew they must leave the country.
Mrs. Blum spent three days waiting in line to get passports and, with them, they hoped to catch a boat to Israel. Luck was again with them. A friend who was unable to travel gave them tickets for a boat about to depart. Next day, two boats left for Israel but only theirs would arrive. The other was severely overloaded and sank.
Once in Israel, Mrs. Blum worked as a pharmacist and her husband worked on a photogrammetry project for the Israeli government. Her brother, Wilhelm, also joined her in Israel and would found a large pharmaceutical company there called Assia, a forerunner of the giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. At it turned out, the Blums would stay just one year in Israel. Mrs. Blum's parents had already immigrated to Canada and, in 1951, they followed with their daughter.
After a spell in Wolfville, N.S., where her husband taught at Acadia University, they settled in Saskatoon where Mr. Blum joined the faculty of the University of Saskatchewan.
Mrs. Blum found a part-time, morning job at a pharmacy, unbeknownst to her daughter. As far as Irene was concerned, Mrs. Blum was a stay-at-home mom. Mrs. Blum got her daughter off to school in the morning and was home by lunchtime. "She didn't want me to know I wasn't her only focus," said Irene.
From time to time, Mrs. Blum taught at the university's college of pharmacy and nutrition, and accepted invitations to visit high schools to talk about the Holocaust.
Mrs. Blum also wrote about the Holocaust, but she kept that work a secret as well. When Irene found out, she encouraged her mother to find a publisher and the first manuscript ended up at Coteau Books, a publishing house in Regina.
Mrs. Blum's editor, Geoffrey Ursell, remembers fondly sitting at Mrs. Blum's table eating chocolate and working on the manuscript with her. He described the work as lyrical.
The Walnut Tree was launched at the Delta Bessborough Hotel, and more than 500 people poured into the ballroom to hear Mrs. Blum read from her work.
Mrs. Blum would write two more books: Children of Paper, which was based on her memories of visiting her grandfather as a child, and The Apothecary, which was about a young man who survives the war as a pharmacist and finds himself in Vienna in the 1960s. The Apothecary won a Saskatchewan Book Award.
Mrs. Blum wrote all three of her books long-hand in bed. As a result, her duvet cover was stained with ink.
In addition to writing, Mrs. Blum was an accomplished musician who used her knowledge of French, English, German, Romanian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish and Italian to help helped performers sing in different languages. Even if she didn't speak the required language, Mrs. Blum learned it anyway. For instance, she researched Bulgarian for a student who was to perform at an international vocal competition in Bulgaria. The student's perfect pronunciation so impressed the judges that they assumed Mrs. Blum was Bulgarian.
For her accomplishments in writing and music, Mrs. Blum received an honorary doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. Eight years earlier, she was one of 50 Holocaust survivors recognized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for their contributions to society.
MARTHA BLUM
Martha Blum was born on June 30, 1913, in Czernowitz, Austria. She died of heart failure in Saskatoon on Dec. 12, 2007. She was 94. In her final moments, she uttered the word "poetry" three times. She is survived by her daughter Irene Blum of Edmonton. She was predeceased by her husband, who died in November, 2004.
My Tommywood column on the exhibit will appear in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles on Thursday and I will post it on this website then. The exhibit, entitled, "Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956-1966" opens to the public this Friday February 8 -- so in order to write the article in time for it to appear this week, I had to do most of my research before seeing the exhibit. Then the folks at the Skirball were good enough to let me visit while while it was still being installed.
My first draft was 4,500 words -- that's about 18 pages long. I had Dylan quotes from interviews he's done recently with Jonathan Lethem and Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone and references to some of the obscure artifacts in the exhibit. With direction from my editor Susan Freudenheim, I cut all the more academic references and less personal commentary and managed to rein in my piece at 2500 words -- and I confess it is the better for it [whether it's any good is another matter].
Still I I had so much fun delving into Dylanalia that beginning on Friday for a week I will feature an item about Bob Dylan each day on The Tommywood blog. Consider it "Dylan week" at Tommywood in honor of the Skirball exhibit.
Her work called to mind a tropical, female Kafka with sensory overload. As the French literary critic and philosopher Hélène Cixous put it: “I discovered an immense writer, the equivalent for me of Kafka, with something more: This was a woman, writing as a woman. I discovered Kafka and it was a woman.” Unlike Kafka’s however, Lispector’s work—though obsessed with Brazilianness and a sense of belonging—had little to say about its own Jewishness. As Grace Paley writes in the introduction to Lispector’s book of stories, Soulstorm: “I thought at one point in my reading that there was some longing for Europe, the Old World; but decided I was wrong. It was simply longing.” And according to Moacyr Scliar, Brazil’s foremost Jewish writer, Lispector “didn’t deny her Jewishness, but she didn’t push it. The reason why this happened is still the subject of discussion here in Brazil.”
She asks: what's the difference between a bookkeeper in the garment district and a Supreme Court Justice?
The answer: One generation.
Grammy-nominated DJ and super-producer Mark Ronson tells Rolling Stone’s Nicole Frehsee that he’s seen his most famous collaborator (other than Bob Dylan), Amy Winehouse, recently, and they discussed new music. “She’s writing songs, and we talked about getting a studio,” says Ronson. “I have to finish a few other things first, but I imagine we’ll go into the studio this year.”
Mark Ronson, the DJ turned recording Artist, who most recently did a Bob Dylan remix, is from a family of talented, creative and charming folks, including sister Charlotte, a designer, uncle Gerald (British tycoon), stepfather Mick Jones (of Foreigner) and mother Anne (a whirlwind of charm) -- you can read more about him and his family in a recent story in the UK Guardian here. But if you want to see a great video, see his recording of "Valerie" with Winehouse on vocals.Ronson also said there may be another, more unusual project in the works. “We’re talking about making a holiday record, with Christmas songs on one side and Hanukkah songs on the other,” Ronson explained. “She’s got songs called, like, ‘Kosher Kisses’ and ‘Alone Under the Mistletoe.’ She was kind of fucking around, but I was like, ‘You have all these amazing records to play for Christmas, like Motown and Carla Thomas and the Charlie Brown Christmas, and unfortunately, us Jews have nothing that cool to listen to. So we should do something.”
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