The Woman in Gold: Reflections

Adele Boch-Bauer - the woman in gold

This evening after going to the family visitation for the deceased partner of a friend, the husband and I went to see "The Woman in Gold" which recounts the story of Maria Altmann, a Vienna born elderly Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who successfully sued the Austrian government to win the return of artwork stolen by the Nazis regime in the wake of the Anschluss when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany.  Besides the compelling personal story of what happened to Altmann's family and Austria's refusal to admit the illegal manner in which the artwork came to be in the Austrian State Gallery - the case went to the U. S. Supreme Court in Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004) - the movie contains a needed retelling of what was done during the Holocaust under the Nazis.   But the movie, in my view has an even wider message: the dangers of what can happen when ideology, religious belief and/or the desire to target classes of people for political gain combine.  

Some will say - as does one character in the movie  - that the past needs to be forgotten.  I believe that the exact opposite is the case.  If we do not know and remember the ugliness of the past we are likely doomed to repeat it in some form or another.   Likewise, we cannot allow individuals or institutions that have committed horrible deeds in the past to try to cloak themselves in respectability and in some case demand deference.  Hitler may have been a madman as some like to argue, but his techniques are still being used today, most often in this country by conservative Christians and politicians eager to win the votes of bigots and racists (as noted in other posts, Vladimir Putin is using Hitler's techniques in Russia).

For political purposes, Hitler needed to blame someone for Germany's defeat in World War I. The Jews became the scapegoats for Germany’s economic catastrophe following the war.   Hitler had good religious backing for his antisemitism: Martin Luther founder of the Lutheran Church, was a raging anti-Semite.  The Roman Catholic Church too for centuries had call Jews "Christ killers."  In short, Hitler had a ready made template from which to launch his mistreatment of Jews and ultimately their murder in the "Final Solution." Yes, some religious leaders in Germany and Austria opposed Hitler and his policies, by far more went willingly along with the program.  Political expediency combined with a religious based bigotry lead to horrors and millions and millions of lost lives.

One would think that the world would have learned from the Holocaust and World War II.  But, too often seemingly not.  Here in America we have the Bible used to justify everything from unequal treatment of blacks and gays - downright discrimination and persecution at times and in some locales - to savaging the social safety net.  Likewise, we have "family values" organizations spewing hate and lies about gays which, if one changes the word "gay" or "homosexual" to "Jew," the statements are near carbon copies of anti-Jewish propaganda used by the Nazis.  And lest we forget, these very same people who are doing the victimizing claim that it is they, not their victims who are being persecuted - just as Hitler claimed the Jews were harming good Germans.  Worse yet, we have politicians only too happy to play upon the hate and bigotry and effort to dehumanize others in order to court the votes of bigots, racists and the ignorant. 

If you haven't seen the movie, go see it.  And after you see it, look around you in today's political and fundamentalist religious circles and reflect on it and think of the wider application of what you witness being done to Vienna's Jews in the movie.   Hate, division, and the dehumanization of others is alive and well in our midst. 

P.S. I was perhaps especially moved by the movie because my paternal grandparents were from Austria - they left just before World War I.