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Will Oscar for "Son of Saul" spur confronting anti-Israelism in leftist culture?

Laszlo Nemes takes Foreign Film Oscar

Laszlo Nemes interviewed by JooTube (Photo:Orly Halevy)
Mr. Laszlo Nemes' debut feature film,the Holocaust-set, Son of Saul, finally won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, after taking similar prizes at Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes, and the Spirit Independent-Film awards Saturday night, also in L.A.

Geza Rohrig filmed by Matyas Erdely 
Photo: Ildi Hermann/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
In February 28th's Sunday N.Y. Times, Katalin Balog, an associate professor of philosophy at Rutgers University-Newark, characterizes the picture in her "‘Son of Saul,’ Kierkegaard and the Holocaust" as: "The film follows a day in the life of Saul, a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of mostly Jewish prisoners the Nazis forced to assist with herding people to the gas chambers, burning the bodies and collecting gold and valuables from the corpses. The film creates a direct, experiential and visceral engagement with these events by maintaining a relentless focus on the minute-to-minute unfolding of Saul’s world."
Saul shows physicians driven by social-pressure
to rationalize
conducting medical atrocities
on Jewish patients

Mr. Nemes, 39, who directed and screenwrote Son of Saul, discusses what it took to produce this provocative look at the dynamics between Nazis and Jewish gas-chamber workers inside a genocide camp. His picture should renew attention to the depths of gentile inhumanity towards Jews in the modern era.

Appearing at Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills on Friday, February 12, 2016 in a knitted kippa to accept Hungarian Mensch Foundation's Mensch Award, filmmaker Nemes reveals that he is a Hungarian Jew whose grandparents were killed by Nazis. In this video interview with JooTube, he responds to the myriad of issues involved in his producing the picture.



Holocaust epic drama, "Son of Saul" director Laszlo Nemes accepted the "Mensch Award" from Mensch Foundation's Hungarian founder, Steven Geiger. Mr. Geiger is concerned that Jews (even the Israeli Left) are too comfortable. 'Anything can happen at any time," the refugee from Communist Hungary declares in this video interview:


In Jeffrey Fleishman's "Oscar winner 'Son of Saul' is a collage of the unimaginable" in yesterday's Sunday L.A. Times,  he writes: “Son of Saul” is “an unwavering vision of a particular kind of hell. No matter how many Holocaust films you've seen, you've not seen one like this,” Times critic Kenneth Turan wrote in his review. “It's essential for us as a culture to continually see and understand that this was not an aberration, that people did this to other people and could do it again. Having films like 'Son of Saul' made and seen is our best hope of that not happening.” How, exactly?

Laszlo Nemes on JooTube
When I offered Mr. Nemes to review our interview, he asked me to omit his remarks supporting Israel - and to embargo the interview until after the Oscar voting was complete (out of concern for offending liberal anti-Zionist, Academy Awards voters- especially Jewish ones who might self-discriminate to prove their universality). JooTube complied, but it does raise an irony:

How can we claim to have come far in educating the world to "Never Again" let anti-Semitism grow, until it becomes a social threat to Jews (which could devolve to physical threat) when the champion depictor of the atrocities recognizes that Jews in Hollywood would discriminate against his opinion to protect Jews from a "stabbing intifada" by Muslims against the Jewish state?

Mrs. Susanne Reyto is an author ("Pursuit of Freedom: a true story of the enduring power of hopes and dreams") and speaker about the turbulent years in Hungary after WW II. Her often harrowing childhood and her ultimate escape from Communist Hungary in the late 1950's left an indelible mark on her spirit.

In this interview at the Son of Saul honors, she reminds us how the Nazi's Middle East allies imported and absorbed their propaganda makers and techniques - which they exploit by scapegoating the Jewish state - Israel to galvanize their power throughout the Muslim world.




 And with a world molified by Islamphobia-mongering, just who's going to stop them?

As Prime Minister Netanyahu said during a speech at a ceremony marking the 100th birthday of former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir:
A straight line leads from the provocations of Jerusalem’s Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini who incited against Jews in the 1920s to the “wild incitement” today that motivates the current round of terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. ("Thirst for destruction driving force of Arab terror for 100 years" Jerusalem Post, 29 February 2016).
Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, meets German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop
in Berlin, November 20, 1941.. (photo credit:JEWISH AGENCY)
Despite the allegation that Hollywood discriminates against minorities (which Oscar-show producers embraced), the irony of last night's Academy Awards was that although the Academy did elect Nazi-set, "Son of Saul," the pro-Palestine-nationalism created by Hitler's Muslim-adopted strategists, necessitates Israel to distribute first-class vacations to Academy (leftist) nominees- in hopes of reversing the effects of the Nazi-Islamist-Leftist campaign to perpetuate Jew-hatred socio-politically for power and influence.

Which is why- for Son of Saul to be purposeful- we must carry its message beyond 'anti-Semitism as a dynamic of history' to confront its essence in Islamic anti-Israelism- and crack the taboo against fighting Islamism (which dominates Muslims and non-Muslims) and threatens the survival of Judaism and the Jewish people.

Read more about "Egyptian Islamo-Nazism and "Omar Amin" von Leers" by Dr. Andrew Bostom in Family Security Matters.

The Oscars revive interest in the definitive documentary about the Holocaust

Adam Benzine with Claude Lanzmann (Photo: JTA)
Will ‘Lanzmann’ finally win an Academy Award? 

"An interview with Adam Benzine, the young first-time director whose award-winning take on the famed, veteran filmmaker is up for an Oscar on Sunday, 28 February" by  Lisa Klug,  Times of IsraelFebruary 27, 2016
The first major documentary about the filmmaker, entitled “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah,” is among the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards, which is broadcast live from Los Angeles on Sunday evening, February 28.  
The superbly-crafted film from first-time director Adam Benzine explores the arduous 12-year journey that led to the creation of Lanzmann’s landmark documentary, “Shoah,” and reveals for the first time the countless challenges the French iconoclast faced in making the film.  
“It didn’t relieve me from anguish,” Lanzmann says. “I think it is the other way around. I have made the film but the film made me. I lived all these months after the end of Shoah like a bereavement as a matter of fact. It took me a very long time to be able to recover.”  
The 40-minute project explores how making “Shoah” nearly — and repeatedly — cost Lanzmann his life. Benzine says the film evokes strong audience response.  
“To sit in a darkened room and watch people cry as the watch your work, it’s a very moving experience,” says writer, producer and director Benzine, 33, who is not Jewish. “Cinema has a tremendous power to unify, and I think that’s very important with the way the world is at the moment.” 
Museum of Tolerance's Liebe Geft interviews Adam Benzine
In the 40-minute film “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Holocaust," director  Adam Benzine explores the seven years of filming and five years of editing required to produce “Shoah,” Lanzmann's 9½-hour documentary which attracted widespread acclaim.

Adam Benzine takes JooTube inside his producing of the film- which is nominated for an Academy Award in the category for Documentary (Short-Subject).  In addition to theatrical showings, it has been broadcast by BBC and will be shown in the US on HBO in May.  Adam Benzine, spoke with JewTube on International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2016 about his effort.





Adam Benzine in conversation with Liebe Geft (director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles) on the making of "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah." Mr. Benzine also answers questions presented by the audience.

Dennis Prager at orthodox shul: 'Why it's a mitzvah to conduct yourself happily'

Dennis Prager: Happy conduct is better
than only feeling or intending to be happy
Jews and Gentiles traversed through a Southern California, El Nino downpour to watch Dennis Prager teach "Why it's a mitzvah to be happy." At orthodox, Beth Jacob Congregation's "Modern Minds on Jewish Matters" series on Wednesday, February 17th, Mr. Prager drew from his 1998 book, "Happiness is a Serious Problem," to teach that the Jewish essence of this concept benefits the individual and those around us. Mr. Prager teaches that that to conduct oneself pleasantly is not only a mitzvah (i.e., Jewish commandment) for behaving kindly to others we encounter, but that during times when we aren't, the imperative helps us to make ourselves happier. 

Mr. Prager's nationally syndicated radio program is aired in L.A. weekday mornings on 870KRLA-AM. Each week, he dedicates "The Happiness Hour" to addressing this issue.

JooTube.TV presents Mr. Prager's remarks in this video playlist. Part 1 is his main talk; Part 2 is the first half of Dennis responding to audience submitted questions regarding his remarks; Part 3 is the concluding Question and Answer segment.


(Video Menu is in the upper-left corner; lower-left corner advance forward and back between segments).

Why Be Happy? Dennis Prager on PragerU, 20 January 2014
Most people think of happiness as essentially a selfish issue: “I want to be happy -- and I want to be happy for me.”  
I’d like to suggest that in fact happiness is far, far more than a selfish desire. In fact, it is a moral obligation.