Important historical movie

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2003)

I moved to Nuremberg in 1957 and lived in an apartment building for U.S.Army officer's families. Unlike most Army wives, I learned the German language. I met many German people who said they dare not complain about Hitler's government or they would disappear like the neighbors who did.
Today, the Germans have a word for their concern about the Hitler era, Vergangenheitbewaltegung. It means "coping with the past." They consider it a grim, unwelcome chapter in their history.
In the film "Judgment at Nuremberg, actor Spencer Tracy visits Kristkindlmart where I had my first taste of the wonderful Lebkucken cookies.
Seeing Marlene Dietrich playing a part in the film, where she says, "We're all not monsters." is a tribute to her as she was in real life greatly oppossed to the Nazi. Glad to hear there is a Plaza named for her in Berlin.
Perhaps I would have added to the film: Judgment at Nuremberg, the story of the German Generals and officers waiting in Berlin for news of Hitler's demise by a bomb. These German officers who tried desperately to upset Hitler's rule were hung slowly by piano wire.
I was often asked, "Why do you think the people never did anything about Dachau and other concentration camps?" I answer: "Germans told me that whoever talked against them, disappeared in the night. Neighbors were frightened for their very lives." Incidently, I was only 7 years old when I first heard of the concentration camps. I was told about it by my compassionate mother in 1939. She read about it in Virginia in the "Richmond News Leader"
Many years later, 1958, when I visited the infamous "Dachau camp", I stood in the gas chamber and scratched on the metal doors, trying to imagine what horror so many Jews and others endured.
"Eleven million died in concentration camps, six million of which were Jews." Ellie Weisel
If we fight a third world war with nuclear weapons, we will be fighting the next war with sticks and stones. Albert Einstein