Amen.
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
During World War II, Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur), a Waffen-SS officer employed in the SS Hygiene Institute, designs programs for the purification of water and the destruction of vermin. He is shocked to learn that the process he has developed to eradicate typhus, by using a hydrogen cyanide mixture called Zyklon B, is now being used for killing Jews and other "undesirables" in extermination camps. Gerstein attempts to notify Pope Pius XII (Marcel Iureş) about the gassings, but is appalled by the lack of response he gets from the Catholic hierarchy. The only person moved is Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz), a young Jesuit priest. Fontana and Gerstein attempt to raise awareness about what is happening to the Jews in Europe but even after Fontana appealing to the pope himself, the Vatican makes only a timid and vague condemnation of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Eventually Gerstein travels to Rome to speak to the pope himself but when he arrives the Germans are taking control of Rome and begin rounding up the Jews of Rome to be sent to concentration camps. Fontana begs the Pope to force the Germans to stop the deportation by appearing at the train station in person but the Pope refuses, saying that doing so will cause hardship for the Christians under Nazi Germany. In disgust and sorrow Fontana puts a Yellow badge on himself and allows himself to be taken on the train of Jews going to the concentration camps. When he arrives at the camp Fontana is interrogated by the head of the camp, a 'friend' of Kurt Gerstein known simply as the Doctor (who is believed to be Dr. Josef Mengele), who despite knowing that the war is lost and that Fontana is a Catholic priest allows Fontana to stay with the Jews and be gassed.
Gerstein attempts to save Fontana but he will not leave. The Doctor escorts Gerstein out of the camp after Fontana and most of the Jews are killed; they drive by German soldiers digging up and burning the bodies of Jews in a mass grave near the camp and the Doctor asks Gerstein if he knows any contacts to help get him out of Germany. Gerstein returns home and gathers all his evidence that documents the Nazi atrocities and takes them to the Allies. Despite accepting his evidence he is still arrested and after reading the charges against him he is found hanged in his cell. Afterward the Doctor is seen speaking to a Cardinal in Rome asking for help leaving the country saying "I'm a doctor, just a physician" and the cardinal agrees to help send him to Argentina.
While the character of Kurt Gerstein is historical, the character of the young priest is fictional. Although based on the action of Gerstein to stop and bring global awareness to the Holocaust, the plot is largely fictitious.

Review: Costa-Gavras has made an important movie with 'Amen.' which looks at the holocaust-tragedy from another point of view which is seldom showed.
But when you take on the large institutions of society, when you make them accountable and demand that they fess up to their inadequacies, and that they not allow it to happen again, then you get the kind of permanent, positive change that is not eroded by a capricious shift in the political winds.The amazing thing about this film was the powerful effect it achieved with very little, if any, shocking footage.
Instead of making his point with stark images, the way so many other films have, Gavras keeps hammering the shear logistics, the size of the camps, the amounts of the gas needed, the HUGE numbers of people that had to be transported.
Gerstein's confrontation with his old friend, the transportation officer, points out how people could vilify certain nazis (SS and Gestapo), and yet remain conveniently ignorant of their own complicity.The Vatican issued a watered down apology in 1998, admitting partial culpability and asking forgiveness.
"Amen," a film based on the largely accurate account of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's multiple attempts to alert the Vatican to the ongoing highly efficient mass slaughter of Jews and others - for which he bore no small responsibility as a technician facilitating efficient genocide - is well done with excellent acting.
"Amen's" Kurt Gerstein and his priest friend both believe that would have happened.That argument is at best questionable and, more likely, reflects the human need for the wish to spawn the thought.
Whether one accepts the Goldenhagen thesis of mass complicity by Germans in the Holocaust, the fact remains that when the slaughter began Germany was at war and, as a character in "Amen" notes, defending the Reich and winning the war, to say nothing of staying clear of what would be seen as treasonous ideas, was the only realistic option.Kurt Gerstein is a mystery.
He gives quick and accurate advice to improve destruction of the "units," as the Jews were referred to, and then tries to prevent use of the Zyklon B gas he helped develop with almost unbelievable declarations that shipments are defective and must be buried.This film owes its origin not so much to Friedlander's compelling account but to Rolf Hochhuth's controversial (still so after many years) "The Deputy," presented as a play to the outrage of many.
Hochhuth portrayed Pope Pius XII as insensitive and unwilling to use his moral authority to challenge an extermination program he knew to be in progress.In the film Gerstein is aided by a young Jesuit priest whose remarkable moral and physical courage was demonstrated by a few, or perhaps too few, clerics who knew what was happening.
The Pope Pius of "Amen" lacks the depth a more accurate and compelling portrayal would have provided.The strongest moments in the film are those briefly showing the efficiency of the death camps focusing less on the victims, most of whom aren't shown, but rather on the chillingly competent technicians and logisticians without whose efforts millions could not have been murdered.Director Costa-Gravas deserves much credit for bringing a difficult to tell complex story to the screen.
Saving a long-despised race thought to be the root cause of every world problem is very much another.Gerstein's attempts to alert the Vatican are channelled through an invented character, a young Catholic priest who symbolises the conscience of thousands of individual Catholics who risked their lives to help Jews.
The Eyes of God. The challenge for Kurt Gerstein after the war, in the hands of the allies, and for Costa-Gavras in this film, is to convince us that he, Kurt Gerstein S.S. officer, was bravely acting as the "eyes of God" in watching the holocaust unfold before his eyes.
We follow Kurt Gerheim (an admirable performance by Ulrich Tukur), a perfectly Aryan, protestant SS-Officer who tries to speak out against Nazi attrocities, and Ricardo Fontana, a young catholic cleric (played to the utmost by the marvellous Matthieu Kassovitz) who joins him in his fight.
Both find solace in the hope that they will put an end to the holocaust.This is noticeably a continental European film, with brilliant direction and dazzlingly good acting, more Gosford Park than Schindler's List in terms of pace.
The idealist Jesuit priest Riccardo Fontana (Mathieu Kassovitz) from an influent Italian family gives his best efforts being the liaison of Gerstein and the leaders of the Vatican.I do not have the knowledge of history to know whether this story is accurate or manipulative, but as a movie it is powerful and striking.
Costa-Gavras directs this film about Holocaust based on the history of the German Kurt Gerstein, who unsuccessfully tried to tell the world about the mass murderers in the concentration camps.
With regard to the role of the Catholic Church, I believe the exposition is simplistic and does not show the big picture of the political environment that the Vatican was living in that historical moment, focusing only in the attempt of the SS officer in having an audience with the Pope.
A German SS officer, Kurt Gerstein(Ulrich Tukur), finds out about the crimes against millions of Jews.
That scene with the insouciant fat-and-happy Cardinals and politicians gorging themselves on seafood on a Vatican City balcony overlooking St. Peters probably ranks as anti-Catholic propaganda right up there with the most exaggerated anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda.Of all the concentration camps in Germany and Poland, how did that priest wind up at Kurt's?
That Pius XII was silent in the face of the Holocaust; that he did little to help the Jews; that he was in fact pro-German if not pro-Nazi; that underneath it all he was anti-Semitic--all are monstrous calumnies that now seem to pass for accepted wisdom.
He is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."In February 1942, Protestant and Catholic leaders of Nazi-occupied Holland prepared a letter condemning the deportation of Jews to death camps in "the East." But only the Catholic bishops, "following the path indicated by our Holy Father," read the letter aloud from the pulpit despite threats from the Nazis.
I think we are naive if we think one more hero could have stopped it."It is also naive to complain--as The New York Times did last week--that Pius XII "did not encourage Catholics to defy Nazi orders." He could hardly direct others to court certain death and remain politically neutral himself.
Splendid film dealing with SS lieutenant Kurt Gerstein attempts to inform Pope Pius XII about Jews being sent to concentration camps and massacred.
The picture talks an officer Gestapo named Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) in charge of Zyklon B , a deadly chemical gas used for killing Jews in the death's showers from concentration camps as Treblinka , Sorbibor , Auschwitz , Majanek , Manthausen ,....
He denounces and explains Pope Pio XII (Marcel Iures) the situation of the Jews's genocide .The pic is correctly based on historic deeds and famous personages as Pio XII and Nazi chiefs who don't appear in the film but they're continuously named as Goering , Goebbles , Himmler , Eichmann ,thus as notorious events as Stalingrado (1943) where Nazis have the first important defeat and the bombing strikes over the Germany cities (Berlin , Dresde) .
Its story, about the attempt of two people to inform the early 1940s world about the Nazi death camps, accused Pope Pius XII of failing to speak out against the removal of Jews from Rome when his doing so might have saved thousands of lives.
It is along the lines of The Deputy, it does not dig deeply into what the Pope was doing, rather if focuses on a fictional main story between these other two characters (though yes Kurt Gerstein was a real person).The main purpose of this story is very clearly promoting the idea that the Church was too silent and let Hitler have his way.
"Amen" is a moving and disturbing account of the attempt of an SS officer and a young Jesuit priest to inform the Vatican of the atrocities committed by the NAZIS against the Jews and to persuade the Vatican to speak out.
The movie's subject is the neglect of the Catholic Church and Allied powers to acknowledge the annihilation of European Jews, and their collective failure to offer any moral or strategic response to the Holocaust.Adapted from Rolf Hochhuth's six-hour 1963 play "The Deputy," "Amen" is shaped as moral inquiry, a meditation on the consequences of protest and complicity.
It offers a sharp critique of the historical role played by the Church without veering into anti-Catholicism, and it is equally critical of the German Protestant community.On its own terms, "Amen" is a memorably film..
It is an excellent movie that shows us the brutality and cruelty of the Nazis and the silence of the Vatican and some Protestant churches in the Holocaust.
As a Catholic, it shocked me how the Vatican, lots of priests and nuns helped the Nazis in their madness of killing Jews (mostly) and other people such as gipsies, homosexual persons etc.
Everybody must know that the Pope Pie XII and lots of priests, cardinals and nuns kept silent, althoug I must admit that other Catholics really helped the Jews.
He entirely overlooks the fact that until the defeat of Nazi Germany, no tangible evidence of the holocaust was available, and therefore, the world leaders of the time did not have a concrete basis upon which to act, let alone take positions and denounce the atrocities.In the end, Gavras' version of the events is nothing new, but a desperate attempt to underscore the rumours already in circulation.
An interesting side story that was left out of the movie is the fact that Gerstein actually served time in a concentration camp for his anti-Nazi activities before joining and advancing in the SS.
Without being an apologist for the Catholic church, however, I should like to question where fiction and historical facts merge and separate in the film.
Centering on action distracts from the topics that justify the film -- not to mention that this leaves the action script with the minor problem that all viewers know the ending full well: nothing happened to stop the death camps.Thinking Amen had been shot in French, I saw it in French.
As for Fontana, the young Jesuit Vatican diplomat -- The film is very good at showing how every religious superior he faces clearly tells him it's no use bringing coals to Newcastle, or news of the elimination of the Jews of Europe to the Holy Father.
This is somehow what the roman-cahtolic church said, when they were informed about the Holocaust - the killed people were Jews and because of that not in the pope`s business.
Ironically, the two people who knew about that and tried to change the churchs attitude towards the Hitler-Regime ("awful, but better than the Comunists!") were a catholic priest (invented, but representing the priests that fought against Hitler and died), what is not that surprising, and a Top-SS-Officer, Kurt Gerstein to be exact (NOT invented as the whole plot is NOT invented - shocking but true!), the man who delivered the Cyclon-B, which IS surprising.
mass-murdering with the Amen of the Vatikan.This film is one of the most important in dealing with guilt an history - not only for Germany - as one can see, for far more actors than we all thought.
Bold historical drama from political maestro Costa-Gavras deals unapologetically with State and Church reactions during the Nazi occupation in Europe.Centered around one priest and one SS Lieutenant, Amen is filled with history's dark underside during WW2 and is touted as a summation of this important director's career.
But what surprises me is that it is quite difficult to find information about the role of the Roman-Catholic church during the war, let alone to find a movie based on these facts.
For as far as I know, there is only one, this one..."Amen" tells us the story of Kurt Gerstein, a brilliant German chemist who is recruited into the SS during the first years of the Second World War. In his function of sanitation engineer, he travels to Eastern Europe, where he is sent to supervise the water purification for the German army.
The people in the movie talk about certain events that happened in the war, for instance the fall of Stalingrad, and this helps you to situate it all.There might never have existed one priest who was able to go directly to the Pope and probably the remorseful SS-officer never existed either, but that doesn't mean the story isn't any good.
The film is about the Holocaust; more precisely it is about the role the Catholic Church played in not condemning the extermination of the Jews.
One of a plethora of films about the WWII Jewish holocaust, "Amen" is a fact/fiction accounting of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's futile attempts to ameliorate the extermination of Jews in Nazi death camps; particularly his appeals to Pope Pius XII whose papacy was at the center of a firestorm of postwar criticism for everything from negligence to cowardice.
One of a plethora of films about the WWII Jewish holocaust, "Amen" is a fact/fiction accounting of German SS officer Kurt Gerstein's futile attempts to ameliorate the extermination of Jews in Nazi death camps; particularly his appeals to Pope Pius XII whose papacy was at the center of a firestorm of postwar criticism for everything from negligence to cowardice.
He was approaching 70 when he directed and co-wrote "Amen" in 2002 which, like the other pictures, was based on actual characters and incidents.This time, Costa-Gavras tackles one of the largest moral issues of the last century: the Nazi Holocaust.
Instead unusually the viewpoint is that of a German SS officer and member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS called Kurt Gerstein, a devout member of the Protestant Confessing Church, who astonishingly witnessed mass murders in the Nazi extermination camps of Belzec and Treblinka and made desperate efforts to inform the wider world and specifically to bring amount condemnation by Pope Pius XII.Although an English-language film, most of the actors are German - Ulrich Tukur plays Gerstein - and, although set in Germany, Italy and Poland, all of the shooting was in Romania.
Its was a good fictional story based on a real one about an SS officer Kurt Gerstein who witness the holocaust extermination and tried to warn the rest of the word through the Vatican about the Nazi crimes against the Jews and other minorities, his reports have been used by the Alies to prove the rumors about concentration camps.
In truth the movie only claims that the head of the catholic church did nothing and in the end even helped some Nazis to escape Europe but thats actually a historical fact and its not fiction, it does not means that catholics faith or catholics are bad many have saved Jews by hiding them and even the second protagonist is a catholic priest how tries to inform the pope and save the Jews..
Amen., Costa-Gavras's 2002 movie about the role of The Vatican in World War II was certain to be controversial, as opinions are strongly felt, relevant information is still secreted in Vatican archives, and the movie is based on a controversial play, The Deputy, by an erratic German playwright, Rolf Hochhuth.
"Amen" is an engrossing film about the holocaust that was getting under way in Europe during WW II and the responses, as I see it, of four men: two SS officers and two members of the Catholic clergy, a priest and the Pope himself, Pius XII.
One may well ask what's a fellow of normal moral sensitivity doing in the SS, but he's a legitimate historical character who has left behind much documentation.) The SS chemist, although a non-Catholic, believes in the moral influence of the Catholic church and so informs a Catholic priest, and much of the latter part of the film depicts the priest trying to influence the Pope, when he can get an audience, to speak out publicly and uncompromisingly to the world about the ongoing Nazi genocide of European Jews.Why the Catholic church?
There's no question that the director has taken a critical, perhaps hostile, view of Pius XII and the Vatican in his film of their response to the holocaust.
I have read up on him after viewing this film and have discovered that he allowed Catholic monasteries and churches to shelter Jews throughout the war.
The actor who played Kurt Gerstein was quite excellent; likewise for the guy who played Riccardo, the priest (I think he was in that movie, Amelie).I believe that this film ranks up there with Schindler's List, The Pianist, Night and Fog, and Escape from Sobibor.
For me Amen represents Costa-Gavras' return to good film-making.
And in Amen he explored the touchy subject of the Holy Catholic Church's involvement in the Holocaust.Costa-Gavras' questions are: why didn't the Pope get more involved in opposing the murder of Jews?
The story follows two men: Kurt Gerstein, a Catholic SS officer who discovers the Nazis are exterminating the Jews and tries to warn the allies and the Vatican for them to intervene and save millions; and Riccardo Fontana, a priest trying to get the Vatican to listen to Gerstein.
examines the links between the Vatican and Nazi Germany that stars Ulrich Tukur,Mathieu Kassovitz,Ion Caramitru and Marcel Iureş.It is a German, Romanian and French film written and directed by Costa-Gavras.
One man who does believe Gerstein is Riccardo Fontana, a Jesuit with ties to the Vatican and close contact with Pope Pius XII.
In time, desperate to spread the word of the holocaust, Gerstein and Fontana find themselves joining ranks with Roman Jews being rounded up by Nazi forces in occupied Italy.Amen.