In the early 1950s, when Simon Wiesenthal was suffering from insomnia, his doctor gave him some advice: "You need to find a hobby." And Wiesenthal replied, "Pursuing Nazis is not enough?"
Pursue Nazis he did, until his death in September 2005 at age 96.
Richard Trank directed The new Simon Wiesenthal documentary, which is narrated by Nicole Kidman.Click photo for larger image.
'I Have Never Forgotten You ..."
Narator: Nicole Kidman.
Director: Richard Trank.
Rating: Not rated but PG-13 in nature for disturbing images. With some English subtitles.
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Trank's film assures Simon Wiesenthal will not be forgotten
Wiesenthal had been just 99 pounds when he emerged from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1945. But he forever shouldered the weight of 6 million murdered Jews, once saying he envisioned an afterlife meeting with them in which he would say, "I didn't forget you."
That inspired the title of a new documentary, "I Have Never Forgotten You: The Life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal," directed and co-written by Richard Trank. Opening at the Manor, it pieces together his story with archival and recent footage, news interviews, observations from his daughter, colleagues and admirers and even a few pieces of Wiesenthal's artwork that conveyed the Holocaust horrors.
When Wiesenthal and his wife, Cyla, were miraculously reunited after World War II, they sat down and counted the number of family members who had died. The list hit 89.
"This is when I first realized the dimension of the tragedy," said Wiesenthal. He and his wife started anew in September 1946 when they had a child, named in honor of her late grandmothers.
Once an architectural engineer, Wiesenthal devoted his life to finding and bringing war criminals to justice. After the war, as he watched SS men be shackled and interrogated in front of the Americans, he realized, "This is the tip of justice."
And, through doggedness, ingenuity, serendipity and occasional subterfuge, he made sure that criminals such as Adolf Eichmann and Franz Stangl were found. In his later years, Wiesenthal became the object of vilification after exposing the dubious or shameful past of some Austrian party leaders.
The documentary, narrated with sensitivity by actress Nicole Kidman, touches on the Hollywood portrayals of Wiesenthal in an HBO movie starring Ben Kingsley and the theatrical release "The Boys From Brazil" and his involvement with Frederick Forsyth's novel turned movie, "The Odessa File."
Trank's movie was made by the documentary film unit of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, so it's no surprise that it lionizes him, deservedly so. It acknowledges Wiesenthal was off target about Josef Mengele being alive, but never mentions possible disappointment at being bypassed for the Nobel Prize or a Paris lawyer who called him an egomaniac (according to Wiesenthal's obituary in The New York Times).
I also would have liked to have heard more from the admittedly private Cyla, who died in 2003, several years before this project was undertaken. It started as a multimedia presentation for the center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and, after Wiesenthal's death, turned into a documentary, with an original score by Lee Holdridge.
Wiesenthal, as we see in the film, once said he was not a Jewish James Bond or a Don Quixote or a hero, just a survivor. But an extraordinary, indefatigable one who never forgot and will never be forgotten.
First Published: June 7, 2007, 9:00 p.m.