Film suggests Nazis’ lead propagandist had role in 1939 massacre
Letter in Leni Riefenstahl archive appears to claim her set instructions led to deaths of Polish Jews, says director
A new documentary on the Nazis’ favorite film-maker and lead propagandist Leni Riefenstahl suggests she was a direct witness to murderous crimes of the Third Reich she later claimed to have known nothing about and might even have contributed to one atrocity herself.
The film Riefenstahl which premieres at the Venice film festival at the end of August also claims the propagandist admired the party and its henchmen until her death at 101 in 2003, a sentiment which ran counter to her insistence she was not signed up to the Nazi cause.
Written and directed by Andres Veiel, the documentary is the first to have had full access to Riefenstahl’s estate. It gives fresh details about claims that the film-maker was witness to one of the first massacres of Polish Jews while briefly working as a war reporter.
Riefenstahl followed Adolf Hitler to Poland at the start of the second world war in September of 1939 and saw the atrocity take place in Końskie, a town in south-central Poland.
A 1952 letter found in her estate appears to claim that Riefenstahl may even have been indirectly responsible for the deaths. The letter, written by a lower-ranking officer to her ex-husband Peter Jacob, a major in the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, refers to an army report on the massacre.
The letter says that Riefenstahl, “probably ahead of filming a scene on the market place,” had urged that “the Jews” be “removed from there.”
When a lance corporal passed on the comments, the officer’s letter says “it ended up sounding like this: ‘Get rid of the Jews!’.” It adds: “Prompted by this remark, some of the Polish Jews attempted to flee and the shots were fired.”
Veiel said: “If this statement is true, Riefenstahl’s set direction played a role in the death of the Jews in Końskie.” At the very least, he added, “her resulting feelings of guilt might explain her vehement denial of even witnessing the crime.”
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