In 1978, four episodes of an American series shocked the German public. The effect of this series was such that in January 1979 Peter Naumman, a neo-Nazi terrorist, blew up two television towers in the east of Hamburg in order to prevent the broadcast of the penultimate episode.
After the broadcast of the series, institutions and citizens were not indifferent to the story of genocide that was presented on screen. Even the German parliament spoke out against the statute of limitations for crimes committed by the Nazis. This series was called Holocaust.
The American television network NBC chose a script written by Gerald Green about the genocide that occurred against the Jews, with Marvin J. Chomsky, one of the directors of the successful miniseries Roots, as its director. In April 1978, Holocaust is broadcast back-to-back for four days. A large number of Americans discovered with this series the horrifying details of a disturbing event that shook the foundations of modern history.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra0oCezFPM0)With this series, as with Raices a year earlier, the power of television to penetrate the population is demonstrated, this medium is capable of capturing a mass audience, transmitting ideas and in some cases being a didactic or manipulative medium, depending on the case.
The series does not show anything that was not already documented and published in books, but unintentionally told for the first time historical facts that many viewers should already know.
[Source](https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/e4b8c6ab-dd8e-4066-bfc2-b62163a68893)The Weiss, a German-Jewish family, the Dorffs, were a close family and were decent until one of their members, Erick, becomes a prominent member of the SS.
The series begins with the wedding between Inga Helms and Karl, the eldest son of the Weiss couple, a prestigious Jewish doctor and pianist. After the celebration, the Nuremberg Anti-Semitic Law is signed, thus beginning the persecution of the Jews, whose rights are taken away and who are also beaten with sticks ferociously in the streets before the passivity of the German citizens. Inga is disowned by her family because she remains faithful to her husband Karl Weiss.
Surgeon Josef Weiss (Fritz Weaver) is sent to Auschwitz with his wife Berta Palitz-Weiss (Rosemary Harris) for trying to save Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto and ends up in the gas chamber.
Gestapo agents arrest and rape Anna Weiss, (Blanche Baker), who is found alone on the street with the Star of David embroidered on her coat, is locked up in a mental sanatorium and executed with carbon monoxide.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNKtWfcMDU)The artist and painter Karl Weiss, (James Woods), is taken to several concentration camps, but finds death in Auschwitz, due to hunger and torture during interrogations to discover who was the author of the charcoal sketches that managed to get out of the concentration camp, illustrating the horrors committed there.
Inga Helms-Weiss (Meryl Streep) sacrifices her freedom to join her husband Karl. In desperation, she pursues Karl through several concentration camps, but only succeeds in having his letters delivered to her by consenting to sex with an SS sergeant. When the two are reunited, she becomes pregnant.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJm2VuqeMrU)The soccer player Rudi Weiss, (Joseph Bottoms) after escaping from Berlin survives as a guerrilla fighter, but his Czech wife, Helena Slomova, (Tovah Feldshuh) dies in a shooting confrontation with Nazi soldiers. Believing her alive, he tries to revive her, but is mistreated and interned in a concentration camp from which he manages to escape.
Erich Dorf (Michael Moriarty), a Berlin lawyer, represents the part of the German people who were seduced by the messages linking Jews to the destruction of Europe. Pushed by his wife, he joins the SS and becomes an unscrupulous murderer in command of the gassing operations in the extermination camps. At the end of the war he is caught by the U.S. Army and takes his own life before being put on trial.
The fictional characters, (the Weiss and the Dorf), cross paths with historical characters such as Adolf Eichmann (Tom Bell), one of the main organizers of the Holocaust and Heinrich Himmler (Ian Holm), head of the SS and one of those directly responsible for the Holocaust.
It shows images of extreme harshness, capable of shocking any viewer. Life in the extermination camps is recreated with all the harshness of the case, men and women herded like cattle by the German guards to the gas chambers, multiple cries of babies and old people crawling to death before the mockery of the soldiers. This attitude of the Nazi Germans extended to homosexuals, gypsies, handicapped, communists, and Polish.
The role of Inga was the first success of Meryl Streep, who at that time in her life was the partner of actor John Cazale (Fredo Corleone in The Godfather), who was seriously ill. Since the couple needed the money to pay the medical bills Streep worked on the series but a month before the broadcast of the series John Cazale died.
Many viewers were moved by Meryl Streep's performance, especially with the tearfulness with which Inga says goodbye to Karl, (they related the real suffering of the actress with that of Inga in fiction).
The miniseries was recognized with multiple awards, most notably: Emmy for Best Director in a Drama Series for Marvin J. Chomsky, Best Actress for Meryl Streep, Best Limited Series and Best Screenplay for Gerald Green, Golden Globes for Best Actor in a Television Series in the Drama category for Michael Moriarty and Best Actress for Rosemary Harris.
Human beings cannot agree with the persecution and killing of other human beings, it cannot be that concentration camps are set up to systematically segregate and kill people by shooting, hanging, beating and using poisonous gases. The Nazis set up a network that included approximately 40,000 facilities, distributed mainly in Eastern Europe.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW4F93dCgpE)Let's say no to any ethnic and religious intolerance, we have to understand our history as human beings, and in that we are helped in part by cinema and television with films and series such as: The Pianist, The Black Book, Schindler's List, Son of Saul, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Great Dictator, Life is Beautiful, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Last Train to Auschwitz, Holocaust, Roots, The Color Purple, The Underground Train, and many others. The audiovisual story represents a historical legacy.
