Sugar-Coated Holocaust?

(RNS) When the education director of a leading Jewish organization screened Joshua Greene's new documentary on the Holocaust, she came back with a troubling request.

The film would be fine as an educational tool for Jewish children, she said, but she told Greene the end of the film was too dark, too depressing. Perhaps, she said, Greene could make it a little happier.

The 49-year-old Long Island filmmaker was stunned.

That's exactly the problem with too many contemporary depictions of the Holocaust, Greene said. Filmmakers have glossed over the horror, put too much of themselves into their projects, not allowed the victims to speak truthfully for themselves.

Oscar-winning films like "Schindler's List" and "Life Is Beautiful" are valuable in educating the masses, he said, but they are too simplistic, too Hollywood. Greene might even call them "irresponsible."

"Directors don't like to disappoint their audiences," said Greene, the co-producer of the new "Witness: Voices From the Holocaust," which will air on May 1 on PBS. "Audiences don't want to pay eight or nine bucks to see a film that makes them sad, so we impose happy endings on events that really had no happy endings."

"Witness" was produced with the assistance of the Fortunoff Archives at Yale University, one of the country's first collections of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust.

But beyond an attempt to preserve the archives for future generations, something else is at work in "Witness." Greene and co-producer Shiva Kumar say firsthand narratives are needed to balance the scales against expensive Hollywood productions that do not truly represent the depravity of Hitler's "final solution."

Recent years have seen a strange morphing of the Holocaust with pop culture. As Jews try to preserve the stories of a dying generation, the Holocaust has become mainstream fodder for countless books, movies and a sometimes controversial Washington, D.C., museum.

Much like the legendary Titanic, Greene said that as the Holocaust is dissected by Hollywood, the line between what really happened and what people think happened slowly becomes blurry.

"The good news is that perhaps because of all this attention, the Holocaust will not be forgotten," Greene said. "The bad news is we don't know what will be remembered."

"Witness" reflects an ongoing discussion in Jewish circles about what the world should remember--or forget--about the Holocaust. On one side, supporters say anything raising Holocaust consciousness is a good thing. Others, like Greene and Kumar, say society must be careful in re-creating the past and not oversimplify in the rush to make an impact--much less a few bucks.

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