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Kate Winslet's Oscar chances hit by The Reader Nazi accusation

Kate Winslet's chances of Oscar glory are being hit by an orchestrated campaign to dismiss her film The Reader as an apologia for Nazi Germany.

Ron Rosenbaum, the author of the critically acclaimed book Explaining Hitler, last week branded the film inaccurate and "the worst Holocaust film ever made", and called on Oscar judges to shun it.

His views received support from Mark Weitzman, the New York head of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who labelled The Reader one of a series of recent Hollywood films that is guilty of "Holocaust revisionism".

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that emails detailing their case against The Reader are now being circulated as part of a covert campaign by supporters of rival films ahead of the Oscar ceremony on Feb 22.

Film critics had previously suggested that the film was an example of "Nazi porn" for its sympathetic treatment of Ms Winslet's character, an illiterate war criminal who locks 300 Jewish women in a burning church, becomes an Auschwitz guard and then seeks redemption by learning to read while on trial after the war.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)