Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust

One of Germany's most famous silent films, "The Golem: How He Came Into the World," was made in 1920. Paul Wegener directed and played a leading role in the film set in 16th-century Prague. The Jewish ghetto is in danger and the emperor order the Jews to leave the city. Only the mythical Golem can help. It's one of the earliest films to address the persecution of Jews.

Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer, "The City Without Jews," is an important example of how films have taken on anti-Semitism. The Austrian-made film is set in Vienna in the 1920s and shows how the residents held Jews responsible for all social ills. Critics, however, have lamented the film's use of anti-Semitic cilches.

Four years earlier in 1916, the American director DW Griffith had created the monumental historical film,"Intolerance." The story explains historical events over the course of four episodes, taking intolerance to task. Yet in a scene showing the crucifixion of Jesus, Griffith employed Jewish stereotypes. As a result, critics have also accused "Intolerance" of demonstrating anti-Semitic tendencies.

"Ben Hur" was first made in 1925, but has been reinvented many time since then. It tells the story of a conflict betweet Jews and Christians at the beginning of the 1st century. Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur lives in Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a contemporary of Jesus Christ. The way the Jewish-Christian relationship is showed in the Ben Hur films remains a topic of discussion today.

Although hardly known today, GW Pabst's "The Trial" (1948) is an astounding early example of how the cinema reacted to the Holocaust. Filmed in Austria just three years after the end of the war, Pabst tells a true story set in 1882 in Hungary. A young girl disappears from her village and Jews are blamed. Tragically, a pogrom follows.

"The Trial" remained an exception. After the war, it took the film industry in Europe quite some time to deal with the subject. The French director Alain Resnais was the first to address the Nazi genocide in 1956, in the unsparing 30-minute documentary "Night and Fog."

It wasn't until the 1978 television mini-series "Holocaust" was made that the genocide was brought to the broader public. The four-part US production directed by Marvin J. Chomsky tells the story of a Jewish family that gets caught in the cogs of the Nazis' genocidal policies.

Fifteen years later, American director Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish on the big screen what "Holocaust" had done for television audiences. "Schindler's List" portrayed the brutal reality of the Nazis' anti-Semitism in Germany, but also in Eastern Europe, spotlighting the unscrupulous SS offcer Amon Göth.

French director Claude Lanzmann harshly criticized Spielberg's drama. "He did not really reflect on the Holocaust and cinema. The Holocaust cannot be portrayed," he said in an interview. Lanzmann himself took up the subjects of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in a completely different way - through long documentaries and essay films such as "Shoah" and "Sobibor."

Italian comedian and filmmaker Roberto Bengini took a daring approach in his film on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In 1997, "Life is Beautiful" premiered, telling the fictional story of Jews suffering in a concentration camps. The humor he wove throughout had a liberating effect.

An equally moving film by Polish-French director Roman Polanski was released in 2002. In "The Pianist," the fate of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman during the war years of 1943-44 was brought to the big screen. The project allowed the director, whose mother and other relatives were deported and murdered by the Nazis, to work through his own family's past.

Films about the life of Jesus Christ often come up in discussions about anti-Semitism in cinema. Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), for example, has been accused of reinforcing anti-Semitic clichés, particularly in scenes in which Jews are indirectly associated with greed.

Much more controversial was the film that Australian Mel Gibson released two years later. Both Christians and Jews accused Gibson of explicit anti-Semitism in the film, saying he didn't counter the implications in the New Testament that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus (who himself was Jewish). In public, Gibson likewise used anti-Semitic speech.

Audiences and critics alike decried the anti-Semitism in the Turkish film, "Valley of the Wolves." The action-packed movie version of a TV series of the same name showed a battle between Turkish soldiers and Israel. The film employed "anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic stereotypes and was inciteful," according to several organizations.

Just how difficult it can still be to address the subject matter of World War II is evident in the response to a three-part German TV series from 2013, "Generation War." The series follows a handful of German soldiers fighting on the eastern front. It was criticized in Poland for anti-Semitism and was said to have represented the Polish resistance.

Margarethe von Trotta's film about Hannah Arendt was well received in 2012. The director sketched a balanced portrait of the philosopher and publicist who, in the 1960s, grappled with a figure who was largely responsible for the Nazi genocide: Adolf Eichmann. Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to explain anti-Semitism clothed in seemingly harmless bureaucracy.

Because the protagonist of the current Hollywood super hero hit "Wonder Woman" is played by Israeli Gal Gadot, the film was not shown in a number of Arab countries. Gadot herself had served in the Israeli army and defended her experience. Not showing "Wonder Woman" is anti-Semitic, according to the public sentiment in Israel.