Amen
French (English dubbed) | Director: Constantin Costa-Gavras | Cast: Ulrich Tukur, Mathieu Kassovitz, Ulrich Muhe, Michael Duchaussoy, Ion Caramitru | Rating: Unrated

In an opening sequence of “Amen,” Costa-Garvas recreates a chilling pre-Holocaust event. A German officer walks through a mental institution evaluating the patients. With a cursory glance and a curt nod, he identifies those who are deemed “unproductive.”

Smiling retarded children, the elderly and the deformed are quietly transported to a death camp where they will undergo what the Nazis call “benevolent euthanasia.” Next, we see outraged German citizens accompanied by a Catholic priest, marching into a German governmental agency where they demand that the executions halt.

“Who is unproductive?” thunders the priest.“Where does it end? Soldiers who were rendered ‘unproductive’ in your wars? Our aging parents?” Cowed by this outcry, the Nazis call a halt to their program of terminating those who are considered “a burden to the state.”

What is puzzling about this scene is what it implies. Would you not expect the same response when the Holocaust begins? Yet, when the word spreads, “They are killing the Jews,” these same citizens and church officials are strangely silent. Consider the plight of Kurt Gerstein (Ulrich Tukur) an expert hygienist who has perfected a disinfectant which will purify contaminated water. When he is summonsed to Nazi headquarters where he receives official commendations, he fails to appreciate the humor of his fellow officers as they joke about his formula for “destroying pests.” It is only when he is treated to a first hand demonstration that he realizes that his scientific formula is being used to kill people. It is called Zyklon B.

Gerstein, who is a deeply religious man, is in torment. He is a loyal career officer, but he finds himself devastated by the implications of his role in the deaths of thousands. He initiates diversionary tactics and pretends to find dangerous defects in the manufacture of Zyklon B. Then, he leaks information about the camps, the gas chambers and the hundreds of boxcars that are carrying Jews to their deaths. To his astonishment, he encounters silence, indifference or outright hostility. Are they afraid of reprisals or do they secretly approve?

Finally Gerstein acquires a single ally, Father Riccardo Fontana. Together, the two men launch a plan to confront Pope Pius XII with their information. After months of failure, Father Fontana succeeds only to discover that the pope is fully aware of the camps and has no intention of interfering. In addition, there is an abundance of proof that this horrific, silent purge is being carried out with the knowledge of other nations, including the Swiss government and the American foreign ambassador who tells Fontana that America’s primary concern is the defeat of Germany — then, America will condemn these atrocities.

It may be of interest to note that the complicity (knowledge) of the church and a number of governmental bureaucracies are not a recent discovery. In fact, the majority of “Amen” is taken from “The Deputy,” a play written by Rolf Hochhuth in 1963. It is a terrible revelation that has been too long concealed. Gerstein was an actual person – an officer who hanged himself in his cell after the war because he could not accept the shame of being charged with war crimes. Father Fontana (a composite of several priests) voluntarily enters a death camp and dies there.

If “Amen” has a significant flaw, it is the film’s constraint. Obviously, Costa-Gavras had no intention of emulating “Schindler’s List.” Instead of depicting scenes of nightmarish slaughter, “Amen” uses understatement. Throughout the film, we are constantly aware of the rumble of boxcars — loaded ones (locked) carrying the victims away and empty ones (open) returning. This constant presence conveys a sense of monumental, unending horror.

“Amen” is an unflinching look an offensive truth. As Francois Mauriac once noted about “The Deputy,” “... a crime of such magnitude falls to no small measure to the responsibility of those witnesses who never cried out against it, whatever the reason for their silence.”