1924 Film That Anticipates the Holocaust Found and Restored
A collector found a complete copy of the film at a flea market in Paris in 2015
By Julissa Treviño
April 6, 2018
The recently restored Austrian silent film Die Stadt Ohne Juden details a dystopian narrative in which Jews are harassed, physically assaulted and forced out of the country by train.
The City Without Jews, as the title translates in English, was made during the interwar period by filmmaker H.K. Breslauer and screenwriter Ida Jenbach. A satire on antisemitism, it was based on a book by the same name by the journalist and writer Hugo Bettauer.
The reception was warm when the film premiered in 1924 in Vienna’s major movie theaters, as Sarah Rose Sharp reports for Hyperallergic, but within a year of its release, the political right had launched a hate campaign against Bettauer.
Read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1924-film-anticipates-holocaust-found-and-restored-180968654/#cQepqRUozjzoOuHI.99
