Stalags (2008) - full transcript

"There was nothing unusual

in the way they lined up

"holding their heads up nigh.

"Nothing unusual except for the fact

these soldiers were women.

"Two platoon of female SS brutes

"in tight pants, shiny boots,

"and jackets stretched

over blooming breasts.

"Under the caps

cropped haircuts were visible,

"but the hair was fine and

the necks delicate and feminine.

"'Holy Jesus; someone muttered.

"Real dames with asses and breasts."

STALAGS

I first saw the Stalags

in a second hand book store.

Booklets with colorful covers

and illustrations of busty SS women

torturing tough men.

It costs 140 shekels.

-140 shekels?

Yes. Look.

-This costs 140 shekels?

And people buy them.

They're no longer available.

They're from the 60's.

Stalag plots are all alike,

Variations on the same theme.

The time: World War ll.

The Allies constantly bomb

Nazi forces.

The protagonist is an American or

British pilot whose plane is hit

he parachutes onto

occupied European territory.

He is taken captive and placed

in a camp, a "Stalag".

"Stammlager" in German,

which means permanent camp.

To his surprise he discovers

that the guards

are sadistic SS women

who rape and torture him.

The few Stalag books still around

are purchased by a secret group

of collectors addicted

to this literary genre.

I found one of these books

at my father's house.

It was a great shock to me,

really severe.

Look, you don't...

in this context you don't talk

with people about feelings.

That whole sexual, emotional

and warlike charge

produces a strong sexual stimulation.

You want to be there.

Reading the description

of the hero in bed

with his mistress,

in Stalag 217, I wanted to be him.

I wanted to be there

with that guard, that officer,

sleep with her and love her

and feel her as a woman.

I mean, I would even...

try to come on to one of them.

Personally.

I would stay in that camp

until the war ended,

I wouldn't want to escape.

What to? To my military service?

To combat?

I wouldn't want that.

But with Nazis?

-That wouldn't bother me.

Nazi women!

-It wouldn't bother me.

I saw them as females,

not as Nazis.

The plot ends with the hero

who'd been tortured and raped

defeating his guards,

raping and murdering them.

But in fact the protagonist

has been strongly attracted

to his tormentors all along.

An aficionado with no qualms

about his own attraction to Germans

is Eyal Liani.

I was a police inspector.

Now I'm retired.

Susanna, it's Liani Eyal.

How are you?

As you know, Im going to be

in Germany the few next days.

So call me.

Good day and kisses.

Being a reserves officer

in the Israeli army

while she... her grandfather

was an SS officer,

I get turned on thinking

of this gentile German,

that I fuck her

on behalf of the six million.

Fuck her in a way that...

have anal sex with her,

or use force... it turns me on

and it really turns her on.

I imagine her grandfather

when I look at her face

and I say: You killed Jews,

but look what this Jew

is doing to your granddaughter.

I'm no pervert.

Just an Israeli enjoying life.

Everyone read Stalags

in the early 1960's,

not just a handful of collectors

with a German fetish.

They were sold at the Tel Aviv

central station.

In Stalags we didn't look for content

or anything of the kind.

We were looking for...

the erotic parts.

I didn't really know

about erotic stuff.

I knew nothing about fucking

until I was 14, 15, 16.

I didn't know there was

such a thing.

But everyone read them,

so I did too,

to seem informed.

It doesn't smell. Does it?

They had that smell.

Here: "The Nazis could torture him."

As much as they liked.

They could do anything.

Masters of the world.

Start here, with the Nazis.

Without the eroticism.

The nipple paragraph

is one I'll never forget.

"Rada Anthony Tchlochova was

staring at her own reflection

"in the window

looking out into the dusk.

"Rada Tchlochova

smiled and sighed."

"Gave a light sigh..."

-"A light sigh."

"She squeezed the man's groin."

-"His groin". She touched his balls.

You knew what "groin" was

when you were 11? -Sure.

"When she was through

with the man,

"the whole plank was

spotted floury white." -What?

I don't know. -What is this?

-Floury? -Floury.

"She took the man's pride

between her fingers." -His pride.

"And she whispered..."

"in broken English..."

his pride soon to go limp.

"And she whispered in broken English:

this is mine"'.

Look at that picture. What sex!

In puritan, conservative Israel

of the early 60's

this was the prominent

pornography available.

It could very well be that

the first time you masturbate,

given that this is the only

sexy literature around,

and literature is the best object

for masturbation if you're 12,

you don't even have

to be reading while you do it.

It activates your imagination.

Bentzi, what are you doing in there?

Taking a bath. -Turn the radio down.

You're not alone here.

In the all-time hit teen film,

"Lemon Popsicle"

the protagonist is seen

holding a Stalag book.

I would climb on the kitchen table

and then... I climbed onto the chair,

then over to the table,

from the table to the pantry

where the most

interesting things would be hidden.

I knew that thing happened...

I just knew it. I heard about it,

I read there was a Holocaust

and I understood it was a part

of something hidden,

or a part of something

people need to read about

and such things really did happen.

Most Stalags are at

the National Library.

The covers note that the books

were originally written in English

by Americans depicting

their captivity by the Nazis.

The authors' names

remained the same:

Mike Longshot; Ralph Butcher

and Mike Baden.

I was certain that this author,

say, Mike Baden,

is real,

and he had really been there

in that camp,

a soldier, a pilot.

He was captured,

fell in love,

and went through everything that he

describes in genuine factual terms,

his personal experience.

This cabinet contained

pocket books and Stalags.

As you see, it's very ugly.

They deteriorated here until I

found and salvaged them years later.

I thought they were translated books.

I see myself as an investigator

of mysteries

in Israeli popular culture

that no one even imagined existed.

I found the Stalags by simply

looking up in the catalogue

any book titled "Stalag"

and there are plenty.

Look. Here, the computer

gives you "Blood Stalag",

"American Stalag", "Hitler Stalag",

"Hindenburg Stalag",

"Death Stalag",

"Special Stalag" and so on.

Baden, Mike.

Here. Baden, Mike. See?

21 titles next to his name.

Look. Mike Baden.

"Here Comes the Sweet Undertaker"

by Mike Baden. Hebrew: E. Keidar.

Here there's an explicit note -

"The author is the translator".

Somehow it was known

that the translation was fake.

The translator is the author.

it's written outright.

Stalags were

original Israeli creations.

The cover illustrations were taken

from American magazines

with no sexual or sadistic contents.

The local writers hid behind

fictitious names

and wrote in the style

of translated literature.

The high, artificial

language of these books,

with sentence structures

similar to English,

making use of the complexity

of the language.

They sensed this was the way

to convince people that...

it was in fact a translation.

The only way to create

sex appeal for these books

in order to attract the Israeli

readers, was to use English names,

and they were very creative.

These people will eventually

talk about it

but the fact

that they still haven't done so

shows you that this taboo

or this sense of the filthy past

or of a stain on their history

still exists.

Obviously, the man who

wrote this knows literature.

He knows how to write prose.

I knew him.

I even read his eulogy.

Maxim Gilan.

Poet Maxim Gilan died in 2005.

He was a radical-left activist.

He edited lsrael's first

porn magazine, "Bull".

In the early 60 's,

when the Stalags came out,

he made his living

translating erotic literature.

Therefore, in bohemian circles

he was considered a Stalag-author.

His mother was a German Jew.

The relationships

between women officers...

there were

no female officers in the SS.

There was no such thing.

German women officers...

It remains unknown whether Gilan

actually wrote Stalags.

In 1962, "Ha'olam Haze" (weekly)

published an item

in which

journalist Uri Aloni exposed

the creator of the genre.

"Mike Baden is Eli Keidar"

The publishers wanted

publicity for their Stalags.

So they cooperated,

whether explicitly or off the record.

That's how we met.

He was near to the bohemia.

He never really mingled

with actors or bohemians,

but he did hang out

on Dizengoff Street.

He'd answer a question,

but wasn't eager to chat.

Rather restrained.

Always well groomed.

Moving gingerly

so his clothes would stay neat.

A character.

Interesting, in fact.

I'm a writer.

I wrote for a living.

I wouldn't have written a single

line without being paid.

I used to avoid

talking about the books.

I wasn't at the forefront.

I'm an anxious person,

I fear I'm not good enough.

That I haven't got what it takes...

I always prefer to stay

on the sidelines.

I was told by my parents

that I was bad.

I've been living with that image

since I was 6 years old.

Even at a safe family moment

I could be slapped.

I was never secure.

When I realized

my parents were unpredictable

and that I should be careful

around them,

somehow even when they smiled

I cringed.

I wanted nothing from them.

They talked and I wrote.

I did what I wanted.

I could write in my own

style, imagination, creativity,

I tried to dramatize

as best I could.

That was my style.

After failing as a journalist,

Keidar tries his luck

at popular literature.

A publisher shows him

an American magazine cover:

An image of SS-women. The way

to the first Stalag was paved.

We were adventurers.

We were the vendors

like sellers in the market,

not storekeepers.

We took the woman, who is

usually a symbol of subjection,

the rape victim etc.,

and turned her into the dominatrix.

We gave her male subjects,

American officers,

American pilots,

the pinnacle of manhood,

turned them into wimps,

and raped them.

When a young boy

read such a book,

we'd ask him:

what impressed you most?

He'd say: when the American

was caught in bed

with the female officer,

and she received 50 lashes

and his genitals were

smeared with honey

and tied to a bag of wasps.

The first Stalag to be published

was "Stalag 13".

The edition was sold out

at newspaper stands

and became

an unprecedented best-seller.

At least 80,000 copies

of "Stalag 13" were sold.

It is the equivalent

of a million copies today.

My credibility amazed people.

Many thought I had been

in that camp myself.

Like many of his peers Keidar

grew up in the shadow of trauma:

his mother had lost

her whole family in the Holocaust.

Every other day

she thought she was dying.

And every other day

she thought I was dying.

She kept talking about death.

She constantly claimed,

at the tiniest thing...

if I refused her

or argued with her

or did not listen to her,

she would...

pretend she was dying.

Say, "I'm dying."

and blame me for killing her.

"Colonel von Schultz

dismissed army morals

"everyone obeyed her.

"the punishment for the

slightest dissidence was death.

"Mike Baden was a prisoner,

he knew that hesitation

"might cost him his life

or at least,; a public whipping

"or a week

of solitary confinement.

"There was no sense

in suffering.

"He hated her. "

A child absorbs this atmosphere

and is affected by it,

I must have been.

It took me years to get rid of it.

Kiedar's background

and the provocative images

produced the winning formula

of Stalag-writing.

Following the success

other books were published:

"Stalag 3", "Stalag 190 "

and "Stalag 217".

The best Stalag was

"l Was a Stalag Commander",

the first one told

from the commander's perspective,

that of a raving sadist.

He describes, indifferently,

his abuse of

his male and female prisoners.

It's as though this commander

sees himself merely as

doing his job as best as he can.

A kind of Eichmann.

Obviously the author thought

of Eichmann while writing,

someone who follows orders.

A bureaucrat.

True, he performers horrific crimes,

but only since

someone has to do the dirty work.

In this place

where I stand before you,

judges of Israel,

to accuse Adolf Eichmann,

I do not stand alone.

With me here

at this time

stand 6 million prosecutors.

The first Stalag came out

just after Eichmann 's trial began.

The sadistic, pornographic

depictions in the Stalags

were read by a public that heard

the shocking testimonies

of Holocaust survivors

for the first time.

The Eichmann trial itself

was one of the boosters

of this literature.

It simply...

made a racket

and gave us extra momentum.

Alongside the weekly coverage

of the trial

"Ha'olam Haze" ran regular

ads for Stalags.

At the time I was in contact

with "Ha'olam Haze".

They were hungry for publicity

so this was a respectable chance

to publicize this book

for a token price.

I think this was

the first push and drive

that hurled us into

an unexpected whirlpool.

Young Keidar did not partake

in the commercial success.

Like many youngsters,

he wanted to see the world

and tried to sell the Stalag

formula to the Germans.

Had I been in the US,

I would now be writing

for "multi level" companies.

At the rate I wrote,

with my creativity and capacity

I'd become a multi-billionaire

at the age of 20.

Who knows? The sky's the limit.

I would end up where

others wouldn't even dream of being.

My imagination,

my inspiration would be endless.

Here I was constrained.

Narkis was left without a writer.

Then I made an agreement

with a friend,

I'll gladly tell you who:

Miron Uriel,

he worked for Social Security.

I told him, you can quit your job.

And he started...

He bought himself

a little typewriter

and churned out books.

I know

he listened to the trial.

He was definitely

aware and affected by it.

At times we took...

it was from Crematorium 3.

We took the burnt ashes

and in the winter

we had to use that ash

to pave roads...

Was it human ash?

-Yes, it was.

The trial was one of his sources.

He used and integrated it

in his writing.

This is Mr. Simhon.

The most famous man

in the country.

The Stalags became a phenomenon.

In the most popular radio

show of the time, "The Simhons",

an episode was dedicated to them:

"The Stalag Blow".

Noah Simhon comes home

and sounds off.

Tzfira, is dinner ready?

-It is.

Any mail?

Yes.

-Is Nava home?

Nava's home.

Let's eat, then.

In one of the episodes,

Noah Simhon comes home,

sits down, and finds

his daughter Nava

holding a book under the table.

Reading clandestinely.

He asks her, what are you reading?

A book, daddy.

I see it's a book.

But what book?

Then he snatches it.

He takes a look at the cover,

and says "Stalag"!

He then opens it and sees...

"The soldier stood up

and stared at bare breasts."

He hits the ceiling.

Noah Simhon, a founding father,

holding a Stalag!

What? Bare breasts?

Is this what my Nava reading?!

That was our life too.

Who would dare bring a Stalag

home to his Jewish mother?

Following this success,

others published their own Stalags.

Competition was such that

a new Stalag came out every day.

Each more extreme and shocking

than the previous one.

Nahman Goldberg wrote

"The Monster of Horror Stalag",

describing cannibalism and incest.

After all I didn't invent

the genre. I joined it.

You read the first one,

and saw how the plot works.

It's always the same story

in slight variations.

The whip is different,

the boobs are different.

We added juicy descriptions,

making it sexy.

We embellished the cruelty,

to make it more attractive.

Goldberg created the sub-genre

called "Israeli

avengers in Germany".

In his books,

"The Shortest Day",

and "The Missile Mari Missed"

Israeli avengers in Germany

hunt Nazis and have sex

with beautiful Arian women.

Goldberg actually described

his own life in Frankfurt

where Israeli Jews ran

questionable clubs

and played

Germany's sex and crime scene.

One of the struggles amongst

Israelis running the clubs

was stealing girls from

each ether's establishments.

This was also the ground

for much violence and fighting

amongst the Israelis themselves.

I remember one Israeli who had

never seen a concentration camp,

but whenever he dealt

with the authorities, the police,

to get some business permit,

or the municipality etc.

And ran into difficulties,

he'd grab his sleeve,

"I'll show you where I was

in the war", as if he had a number.

Naturally it didn't come

to rolling up his sleeve.

He'd be told:

"No, no. Don't do that."

Usually he got what he wanted.

These Israeli exploits in Germany

were known in Israel.

Stalag publishers hurried

to translate the sensation

into a sub-genre whose national

heroes take vengeance on Nazis.

In Germany Keidar knew nothing

of the Stalag's success.

I took the books and tried

to translate them to German.

I knew someone who worked

in the university there.

He read them and called me a liar,

saying I couldn't have written them.

Having failed to sell this format

to the Germans,

Keidar worked at a night club

owned by an Auschwitz survivor.

This inspired his book:

"Here Comes the Sweet Undertaker".

He hated them

from the bottom of his heart.

He was ready to get back at them

right there with a machine gun.

This is really the Stalag

behind the Stalags:

the writer of the Stalags

opens the curtain

and lets his readers see

what he really thinks.

Jews having sex with German women,

wanting to rape them,

and actually do it.

Jews? Israelis?

Who are so moral?

Germans are scum,

but Jews cannot really hurt them,

they're too moral.

No, Jews can indeed do this,

says Eli Keidar.

They want to and they can

and they do.

So they're no better than Nazis.

The book,

explicitly depicting incest

between the Jewish hero and

his German mother was banned.

An even more notorious Stalag

was published at the same time:

"I Was Colonel Schulz's

Private Bitch".

Then came Gutman,

an arrogant type.

He said, "Your Stalags are

pornographic to a certain extent,

"I'll outdo you by far."

He published a book

which I haven't read to this day,

but I'm told it was

written in very bad taste.

Pornographically it crossed

the lines, beyond normal.

The most famous Stalag

of them all was the one that...

It became a classic

just for its title:

"l Was Colonel Schultz's

Private Bitch".

The book must have been

based on a real story

about a Nazi officer

who abused a Frenchwoman.

Every copy of the book was traced

and destroyed

by the Israeli Police.

Dozens of policemen are fighting

a malignant apparition

in our life:

pornographic literature.

Under a literary guise

thousands of books

are sold

written by experts

of sexual urges.

2 years

after the first Stalag appeared

having outraged

Holocaust survivors,

the phenomenon was

about to be terminated.

I tried to forget them because

I found them to be plain filth,

but they were around

for a long time.

I was chair of a commission

that had to read those books

in order to voice our opinion.

It was very difficult.

"Ha'olam Haze", where Stalag

ads appeared every week

alongside reports of the trial,

gave the scandal full coverage

and devoted

two back covers to it.

We handled Stalags

when they were

the center of attention.

The weekly's front page sported

Eichmann's face and a noose,

while its back cover showed

a Stalag copy.

Alongside the Eichmann trial

going into posterity,

it got a rather high profile

and almost equally popularity,

people were interested in this

pornography case.

An essential ruling was

expected from the judge

on the principle question of:

What is pornography?

Forcing people not to see

something they wish to see?

Or to see what they do not wish

to see? This whole idea is warped

and patronizing.

Imagining some moral authority

setting standards for others.

Publisher Gutman said

the books were harmless.

these war accounts

meant to educate

about the Nazis' crimes.

Everything written there

had never happened.

There had been horrific things

under German occupation,

but not that. That writing was

a figment of sick Israeli minds.

I think that in reality

there were similar situations

and even much worse

than those described

in the worst of Stalag books.

I didn't invent the plot, it existed.

Those things did take place.

All I needed to do was reveal it.

Expose the story

to the eyes of the world.

The prosecution was most shocked

by mixing Holocaust horror

and Jewish-German sex.

I don't think for a single moment

that I created the least bit

of anything

that directly harmed anyone

by reading the book.

The judge convicted Gutman

for publishing "l Was

Colonel Schultz 's Private Bitch

In 10 minutes a friend agreed

to write a book titled:

"Schultz's Bitch"

to profit from the aftermath

of the banned book.

If I'm not mistaken,

I sold three editions.

Finally the market was saturated

and publication of Stalags halted.

I created an epidemic.

Things came to a point

where these books

no longer sold.

If 300-400 copies of a book

were sold, that was a lot.

"fame is fleetin".

Did Stalags portray a reality

silenced by the establishment?

Most booklets described

women torturing men.

"l was Colonel Schultz 's Private

Bitch" depicted the contrary:

a man torturing a woman.

Did the book hit a truth

closer to reality?

When a Nazi officer or policeman

happened to catch some female,

wouldn't he rape her?

You mean to tell me he didn't?

Those Nazi beasts

didn't screw Jewish women?

They raped

and murdered and killed.

In any book about the Holocaust

you'll read that they raped women.

How did youth

perceive the pornography

and harassment

depicted in Stalags?

For an Israeli child in

the 1960's, these are Jews.

He doesn't think of Poles

or Frenchmen.

For him, the inmates are all Jews.

The victims of abuse are

his parents,

His grandparents.

Potentially, himself.

The only way not to be subject

to such abuse

is to be the abuser himself.

The youngsters' attitude towards

the Nazis has always been ambivalent.

In certain situations

it wasn't obvious with whom

Israeli youth identified.

There was often a figure invented

by Auschwitz survivors

and embodied

in the person of Mengele.

A young man, tall, lean,

handsome, elegantly dressed.

There was something very sexy

in this character.

Very virile, attractive, strong.

The exact opposite of the beaten Jew

led to the gas chambers.

I recalled people looking

for SS boots in Jaffa,

when these were sold

on the flea market.

Wearing them

enhanced your manhood.

When I see a Nazi parade

I'm impressed.

It radiates an intoxicating power.

It profoundly affects

your psyche.

It is amazing. You see even rows,

straight, impeccable uniforms,

superb precision.

This army marches valiantly.

If you're suppressing sex,

in a society where

many issues are suppressed,

many of them Holocaust-related,

because of the hundreds of

thousands of survivors,

and your parents can't tell you

what they had been through,

you breathe the thick air

of suppression,

and then this happens, too.

For some, these books offered

information about the Holocaust

at a time when very few

sources were available.

After the founding of the State,

in the 1950 's, survivors came

comprising about

half of the population

but their voice was unheard

and their story untold.

During World War II

we all ignored what was

happening to the Jews.

There were rumors,

some information

but the general tendency

was to simply ignore them.

They were ignored.

And afterwards, there was some...

perhaps not gloating

but something similar.

The old-timers here said,

"Why didn't they come here?

"This is their own fault.

"They could have emigrated

in time, as we did."

There was absolute alienation.

Also, there were always

questions asked,

what did you do

in order to stay alive?

How come you survived?

People were very reserved,

since people thought

that only the cruel survived...

Survival of the fittest.

Namely, that only those capable

of stepping on others survived.

People were unaware

of the role of mere chance.

I had an Auschwitz number

and it disturbed me terribly

to show it to everyone...

they all spoke to me about it.

So I went to have it removed,

first thing.

Only one man

dealt almost entirely with Jews,

with them

and with their extermination.

This man is Adolf Eichmann.

The public attitude changed

only after the Eichmann trial.

This was actually the...

watershed, when suddenly

many people in Israel

heard for the first time

what had really taken place.

I was there

for about 2 years.

Time there is not like

it is here on Planet Earth.

K.Tzetnik was the first to tell

the Auschwitz story in Hebrew.

They wore...

I have it here.

-That's what you wore there.

This was a man

who had been in Auschwitz

and stayed alive to tell

the Auschwitz story.

He was the only one here,

for at least 10 years.

Their name was...

their number, "K.Tzetnik" (KZ).

The Eichmann trials exposed

the identity of Yehiel Feiner-Dinur

who hid behind his pseudonym ,

"K. Tzetnik ".

He must have decided not

to tell the story as Yehiel Feiner

from his own personal

point of view,

but as the bearer of that

KZ number.

"K.Tzetnik" was the

acronym KZ,

short for Konzentrationslager,

(concentration camp).

This is a literary stance, writing

as the "everyman" who was there.

Since I went through it

with them, I could speak for them

as though I were all of them.

I see them.

They look at me.

I see them.

-Sit down please.

I saw them.

No, Mr. Dinur.

-Yes?

Listen to the prosecutor.

Listen to me.

No, Mr. Dinur.

Quiet, quiet...

Please remain seated.

Everyone please remain seated.

Remain seated.

The trial raised

for the first time

the Holocaust

as a public theme.

K. Tzetnik's fainting

was one of its high points.

What do you feel about

Adolf Eichmann now? Now.

The last time you saw Adolf Eichmann

was when you were testifying.

No hatred, but hatred

about human being.

I was...

I was afraid about myself.

Then came everything, then I saw,

I'm capable to do this?

I'm capable, exactly like he.

Not god.

It's not a god, it's not a Hitler,

it's not a Heidler,

it's not

Adolf Eichmann.

It's me.

The trial' made K. Trzetnik

The best known writer.

K.Tzetnik was a very

special individual.

I'm not saying I really

understood him, completely.

He wrote a book titled

"The Dollhouse".

He described a brothel

with Jewish prostitutes

run with frightful sadism,

even sexually.

He published "The Dollhouse"

in 1953,

about a decade before

the first Stalag.

"Elsa of Dusseldorf reigns

almighty at Pleasure Bloc.

"Her body is slender

"she emphasizes this

by wearing tight riding pants

"Jodhpur style,

tucked into her boots.

"After hours of amusement

when the soldiers left the camp,

"Elsa would pace around

like an aroused predator.

"The girls trembled.

"After the Germans,

it was Elsa 's turn,

"a turn from hell into damnation.

"She would grab one of the girls,

drag her to her own cabin,

"pounce on her and sniff

the man who had just left. "

K.Tzetnik did what

many people do as victims:

they identify in a perverted,

strange way with...

their victimizer

and absorb some of his violence.

That's why his stories

were pornographic, in a way.

Unfortunately the Nazis managed

to create such a reality.

K.Tzetnik always claimed,

that he didn't write anything

he hadn't experienced or known.

If you tell dryly, factually,

about the sexual abuse

of Jewish girls

who were turned into

camp whores for the Germans,

you are documenting

a part of what happened.

But the way he describes

what a Jewish girl felt

when a German soldier lay

on top of her, abused her sexually,

you turn this encounter as any

pornography internalizes violence,

you make it stimulating.

"By Daniella's bed the German

hangs up his coat in the closet.

"Out of the screaming mass,

his hoarse voice rises

"whimpering in her ear.

"Her eyes are closed.

"The Neanderthal mummy's

face crowded her own.

"She senses his odor.

"He claws her body like a crab.

"Schultze presses

his long rod at her. "

He described

only what he saw.

So he's being scolded:

"You told the truth

and now we'll condemn you."

I don't see any sense in that.

He caused enormous harm

because those were the first

books about the Holocaust here

and that became the trademark.

Only in the late 90's, Dan Meron

dared publish an unprecedented

critique of K. Tzetnik's writing.

He dominated this niche.

And people didn't dare to object,

saying "no" was stigmatized:

saying "no" to "Mr. Holocaust",

the one who represents

the survivors.

I swear to God...

That my testimony at this trial...

That my testimony at this trial...

Will be the truth...

-Will be the truth...

The whole truth...

-The whole truth...

And nothing but the truth...

-And nothing but the truth.

If you read Auschwitz

memoirs today,

everyone writes about arriving

at the Auschwitz platform

and the shouts "Schnell!" (hurry),

and Mengele standing there

performing selections.

Now, people arrived knowing

nothing about such a man.

They never saw him before,

nor would they, afterwards.

Could Mengele have...

stood there 24 hours a day for

years doing this single-handedly?

No. After all he was also in charge

of hospitals, experiments.

So there were SS men

standing there. Did we know who?

But Mengele, too,

became a symbol.

In other words, selection

at Auschwitz meant Mengele.

So memoirists, so-called,

write that Mengele stood there

sending people right or left.

Did they know it was Mengele?

No.

Do I remember what he looked like?

No.

K.Tzetnik, in a way,

opened the door to...

using the Holocaust in this manner.

I think that the creators

of this Stalag genre learned a lot

from K.Tzetnik who preceded them.

When I began to think

of K.Tzetnik

I realized that like my peers

I recall books making the rounds.

Where were they from? Don't know.

They were passed on amongst us.

These were yellow booklets with

illustrations, mainly the covers,

called "Stalags",

pornographic literature

that dealt with events in the camps.

So we had either K.Ttzetnik

who was legitimate

or Stalags, that were not.

Both dealt with the same theme.

The camps.

Who were the camp victims?

Jews.

Who were the people we grew up with?

Half of them were survivors.

I grew up with children

of survivors.

This generation,

initiated by Stalags and K. Ttzetnik,

confused the two genres.

They recall that Stalags

depicted sex forced by Nazis

on Jewish women,

while most of them didn't.

The Stalags were not titled

"Tales of Auschwitz".

I knew Auschwitz

and the camps existed.

Perhaps some people

described in Stalags

were saved through

services rendered.

People survived through

sexual favors? -Yes, it's proven.

Don't you know?

There were whorehouses.

They were accused:

"How did you survive?"

Men were asked,

"Were you a Kapo?"

And women,

"Were you a whore?"

Someone I know thinks

her mother had sex

with a camp commander

in order to save her sister.

I don't know if that's true,

but it's a possibility.

A daughter thinks this

of her old mother.

She assumes it happened.

There's an unresolved chapter

in the story.

Everywhere in lsrael in any

neighborhood street, village,

suspicions were aimed mostly

at beautiful childless women.

Such a woman was

always very beautiful.

A very attractive woman.

People grew up knowing that.

Often, she was childless,

and going back to 16th century

witch-hunts,

it's very easy to attribute this

to such a woman,

who's very attractive and that,

for some reason, never had kids.

Say there were 50 girls

or women who did this somewhere.

That's nothing.

That is absolutely irrelevant

considering the horrific

suffering of women as mothers.

The deeper you research

and read testimonies...

I cross-reference them with the Nazi

records and many other resources.

I don't establish anything

on a single testimony.

This was just not true.

If you refer to what really happened,

there were no Jewish whores

in the Holocaust.

No battlefield whores.

All those stories are not true.

It pains me that survivors had

to hear such constant accusations.

The Holocaust was bad enough

without this accusation of women,

that they used

their sexuality to survive,

or that the Germans

assaulted them sexually.

The Stalag phenomenon ceased

2 years after it appeared

shortly after the court ruled

that the books were pornography.

But in the 90's K. Tzetnik's books

were included

in high school

matriculation curricula.

He became the school system's

main Holocaust author.

This is Block no. 24.

Young Jewish beauties

were brought here.

They were sterilized and brought

to "the Pleasure Block".

Each was allotted a cell,

and given some makeup.

She had to be on call

24 hours a day

to satisfy the lust of truckloads

of German soldiers arriving here.

They would unload them here,

at this building.

For sexual pleasure. These girls

were called "Battlefield Whores".

How does the process work?

K.Tzetnik talks about it

in his book, "The Dollhouse".

"The Pleasure Block. In these

pink barracks, no beatings.

"One spared the bodies of girls

destined to be Germans' whores."

All this interest and fascination

with women and the Holocaust,

comes up when I show a photo

of Auschwitz

with Block 24 known as

the whorehouse.

So everyone tells me,

"Here were Jewish whores".

And I ask,

"How do you know?"

"K.Tzetnik wrote about it

in "Dollhouse".

What do we know

about the Holocaust?

On the one hand they know

about resistance heroes

and on the other, K.Tzetnik.

"Dollhouse". Lovely.

"Dollhouse" was published

in the 1950's

and here it was coming true, as evil

combined with forbidden fruit.

When you confront Israeli society

with the Holocaust,

or when people dare talk

about the Holocaust and sex,

That's what you get.

There are Holocaust "experts"

to this day.

There are Holocaust pornographers.

You name it.

And Holocaust mongers.

I face them when I guide them.

A session with 16-year olds

is usually 1.5 hours long.

As soon as you start talking about

the horror, they fall silent,

Mengele's name always

draws silence and attentiveness.

"He pulled out babies' eyes?"

Eager questions that become

almost embarrassing.

I'll be frank.

In a way I make use of this.

The greatest tragedies

in K.Tzetnik's "Salamandra"

is when the 30 women

hide with their babies...

Those who recommended his books

actually read them?

How did they read them?

What did they think is in them?

How can this teach young

people valor, sacrifice,

patriotism?

It tells you how people became

beasts in hell.

I have no clear answer for this.

But I wonder how these questions

weren't asked.

K.Tzetnik's book impressed me

very much.

My kids will study it later as well.

It is included

in the high school curricula.

I chose this paragraph

to emphasize and somehow...

inform them about the different

human tragedies in the Holocaust.

These brief horrifying stories

speak mostly to children.

"K.Tzetnik - Salamandra"

The images in K. Tzetnik's books

and in the Stalags

permeated Israeli consciousness

and to this day this mixture

of horror, sadism and pornography

serves to perpetuate

the memory of the Holocaust.

I always thought

that the Holocaust should

be written about in minimal,

most modest, simplest terms.

I mean,

there are no words...

There are no big words like

"horror" that even get close.

And even then, you're only

dealing with it partially.