Oscars 2009: Holocaust survivor defends Kate Winslet film
The film's producers wheeled out Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to combat a growing campaign in Hollywood designed to deny Ms Winslet her first golden statuette as best actress.
As The Sunday Telegraph revealed in mid February, a covert campaign to rubbish the film began after prominent experts on Nazi Germany denounced the film for portraying Ms Winslet's character, an illiterate and unrepentant concentration camp guard, as too sympathetic.
Ron Rosenbaum, author of the book Explaining Hitler, branded The Reader the worst Holocaust movie in history and complained that it falsely implies that Germans were ignorant of Hitler's genocide.
Mark Weitzman, the New York head of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said The Reader was guilty of "Holocaust revisionism".
The team spread word of Mr Wiesel's support for The Reader before Oscar voting closed on Tuesday night.
Then on Friday, The Reader's British director and screenwriter, Stephen Daldry and David Hare, joined forces with producers Harvey Weinstein and Donna Gigliotti, issuing a statement condemning the "mudslinging" against their movie.
"It is outrageous and insulting that people have called it a Holocaust denial film," they said. "These allegations are fuelled by ignorance and a misunderstanding of the material.
"The Reader is a film about how a generation of Germans lived in the shadow of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. Some detractors of the film have said that it is a piece of Holocaust revisionism; however Holocaust survivors, children of Holocaust survivors and a Nobel Peace Prize winner feel differently."
The producers deployed their trump card, Mr Wiesel, the 80-year-old Jewish writer whose book Night recounts his time as an inmate of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
Mr Wiesel praised The Reader as "a film that deals powerfully with Germany's reconciliation with its past." He said: "It is not about the Holocaust; it is about what Germany did to itself and its future generations. It is a faithful adaptation of an important book, that is still relevant today as genocide continues to be practiced around the world."..
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
As The Sunday Telegraph revealed in mid February, a covert campaign to rubbish the film began after prominent experts on Nazi Germany denounced the film for portraying Ms Winslet's character, an illiterate and unrepentant concentration camp guard, as too sympathetic.
Ron Rosenbaum, author of the book Explaining Hitler, branded The Reader the worst Holocaust movie in history and complained that it falsely implies that Germans were ignorant of Hitler's genocide.
Mark Weitzman, the New York head of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said The Reader was guilty of "Holocaust revisionism".
The team spread word of Mr Wiesel's support for The Reader before Oscar voting closed on Tuesday night.
Then on Friday, The Reader's British director and screenwriter, Stephen Daldry and David Hare, joined forces with producers Harvey Weinstein and Donna Gigliotti, issuing a statement condemning the "mudslinging" against their movie.
"It is outrageous and insulting that people have called it a Holocaust denial film," they said. "These allegations are fuelled by ignorance and a misunderstanding of the material.
"The Reader is a film about how a generation of Germans lived in the shadow of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. Some detractors of the film have said that it is a piece of Holocaust revisionism; however Holocaust survivors, children of Holocaust survivors and a Nobel Peace Prize winner feel differently."
The producers deployed their trump card, Mr Wiesel, the 80-year-old Jewish writer whose book Night recounts his time as an inmate of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
Mr Wiesel praised The Reader as "a film that deals powerfully with Germany's reconciliation with its past." He said: "It is not about the Holocaust; it is about what Germany did to itself and its future generations. It is a faithful adaptation of an important book, that is still relevant today as genocide continues to be practiced around the world."..