The matter of group-identity
is salient in the film, The Aryan Couple (2004), which actually centers
around two couples: Joseph and Rachel Krauzenberg, and Hans and Ingrid
Vassman. The Krauzenbergs contract with Himmler, the man whom in Nazi Germany
was tasked with riding the Reich of its Jewish population, to exchange the Krauzenbergs’
asset-rich and sprawling conglomerate for safe passage of the entire
Krauzenberg family out of Germany to Palestine instead of being sent to a
concentration camp. Joseph and Rachel are Germans, and yet, quite artificially,
they refer to Germans in the third person, and to themselves as Jews. It is
precisely this error that I submit may have contributed historically to the
ostracism of the Jews in Germany even before Hitler’s rise to power, hence contributing
to setting the stage for a final, horrific solution. Film can thus be used to widen
people’s thinking on historical and political events, and thus play a deeper
role than merely to entertain.
The full essay is at "The Aryan Couple."
