Out of the Ashes
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Movie Reviews of Out of the Ashes
Movie Review: The choiceless choices of a Jewish doctor in Auschwitz
Summary: 5 Stars
I still remember the resolution of "The Man in the Glass Booth" as being the moment when the idea that those who survived the Nazi concentration camps could be assailed by massive guilt for coming out alive. Robert Shaw's play raised more issues than that, and there are certain dramatic twists and turns in that particular story, but the importance of guilt and what it can do to you came through. However, "The Man in the Glass Booth" is a work of fiction, and this 2003 Showtime original film is based on a true story.
Out of the Ashes" addresses more directly the idea that surviving Auschwitz could involve guilt in the particular case of Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti), a Jewish-Hungarian doctor who did just that. She makes her way to America and wants to practice medicine again, but there are questions about what she did in the camps and to what degree she colluded with the Nazis. Not just the Nazis, but with Dr. Joseph Mengele (Jonathan Cake). When he discovered Perl was a doctor, he asked her to help him identify the pregnant women in the camp so that they could be taken to a special infirmary. Of course, this is a lie, which Perl learns almost immediately.
Perl has to appear before three I.N.S. investigators. Herman Prentiss (Beau Bridges) is the most accusatory, Jake Smith (Richard Crenna) seems sympathetic, and Peter Schuman (Bruce Davison) seems troubled, so the trio provide a variety of responses to the story Perl has to tell. In telling her story, Perl goes back to not only her time in Auschwitz, but before the Nazis came to Hungary. As that story unfolds it becomes clear that what she did is not as important to her inquisitors, herself, or her audience, as why. I assume that anyone who watches "Out of the Ashes" will be familiar with the horrors of the Holocaust, but each story told in such settings always finds a way to evoke the horror anew and this one is no different.
My only real problem with "Out of the Ashes" is not its historical resolution but rather its dramatic. There is a point where Perl comes to terms with her own actions, which is what allows her to go on and live her life. We understand how it provides her with a sense of peace, but how it translates into what the decision reached by the tribunal is left unstated. The fact that Mr. Prentiss delivers their verdict was not lost on me, but I found it hard to believe the words he speaks were written by him and I see him as the odd-man out on a split decision. So that leaves a gap in the dramatic structure of the story, which matters because in adapting Perl's book "I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz," Anne Meredith ("Bastard Out of Carolina") has chosen for Perl's story to be revealed in the course of that inquiry. Meredith won the Writers Guild of America award for Adapted Long Form teleplay, so it is not that this is a flawed script, but that I really wanted a better sense of the judgment being offered and I found what was provided inadequate to that task.
Showtime's promotions for this movie keep asking the question, "What would you do?" But that is really a false issue, as is the specific way that Perl tried to help women in Auschwitz, which resonates in a polarized America in a completely different way. In interview clips Lahti talks about what Perl did as "choiceless choices," and I certainly endorse the idea that judging someone when you are incapable of standing in their shoes is a senseless intellectual game. You can say what you would do if you were in the position of Gisella Perl or the title character in "Sophie's Choice," but you are separated from such decisions by some quantum differences in time and place such musing are at least absurd if not insulting.
Final Note: Among the brief special features on this DVD is a map marking the location of the Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe. The map makes a distinction between concentration camps, such as Buchenwald and Dachau, and the extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is not a distinction in nomenclature that I have followed previously, and it is hampered by an inadequate understanding of which camps fall into which categories, but it strikes me as making a valid point.
Movie Review: No More Fires.....Please!
Summary: 5 Stars
This biographical film relates the story of Auschwitz survivor, Dr. Gisella Perl, providing an important chapter into the lives of those poor souls tortured into unthinkable acts in order to survive during the Holocaust of WWII.
Dr. Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti) arrives in New York with tear filled eyes begging for a new life after WWII. Perl wanted to be a doctor from childhood; she studied hard and managed to open a very successful private practice in Hungary. Her only downfall ended up being her bloodlines and this very strong woman soon found herself carted off to Auschwitz. In a series of flashbacks Perl is examined by a committee of American INS men who are judging her character as a step towards her citizenship. Perl is seen as a survivor who at times may have saved her own life at the sake of others and she is accused of collaborating with the Nazi doctor like the retched Josef Mengele. In actuality Perl saved many women by sacrificing the unborn lives of their fetuses after being tricked by Mengele into submission and having to see what went on behind the walls of Auschwitz. Despite the horrors she witnessed Perl survived to flourish once again and her true story is one of an undying spirit.
Christina Lahti is phenomenal in her role as Gisella Perl. She manages to capture both the brokenness and the strength of this woman with equal determination. Many scenes in this film are absolutely gut-wrenching but entirely important. As stated in the film Auschwitz became its own country and the "rules of humanity" no longer applied. Under these circumstances many atrocities were committed by Nazi's and the Jewish prisoners alike...who is to say what depths a human being can reach under the horror of the Holocaust? In order to thrive in the conditions faced by the prisoners they were forced to either submit and then be burned alive or to calculate another way of living. Gisella Perl did just that. Despite how you feel about abortions this woman had to perform the procedures bare handed and under intolerable conditions in order to save the lives of women prisoners. She was forced under threat to assist in "experiments" beside Mengele and even went as far as saving a female Nazi guard from her own "predicament" without question. Placed in the same circumstances few of us would have ever survived so leave your moral judgments behind on this one. Instead allow this one woman's story to matter so that the ashes of Auschwitz and all of the other concentration camps never establish a foothold in our world again.
Movie Review: holocaust remembered
Summary: 5 Stars
In Memory Of The Holocaust
Let All The World Never Forget
In Germany one dark day
Evil became, because of one man
All the people had to salute
With hand held high
Every person who was in Hitler's life
Wore his Nazi slogan with pride
While, all the weak, sick and disabled
Mostly Jews, who were also German born
Were sent to concentration camps, because
This man Hitler sought a perfect race
And so began the Holocaust
Jews died by the hundreds each day
For Hitler wanted only blonde hair and blue eyes
He wanted only strong men and women
So many people had to hide
In fear of their lives
As the Secret Service hunted to find
The French underground
Helped some from being captured by the state
Other countries close to Germany
Assisted terrified people to escape
I remember those brave people who saved lives
But millions more still died
The Nazi put numbers on their arms
And set them to hard labour, with little food and drink
Where they became sick or weak
Then they were told to go the showers
They did not know, this was the Nazi gas chambers
Where they would die
After death they were put in the ovens
To hide from the world this genocide
Let us remember the heroes of German occupation
And though we may thank God it is over
We must never let this happen again
There must be peace on earth
Please let the war we are in
Never become another forgotten war
And let no fanatical man
Ever take our souls away
In America, The USA.
Linda Ann Henry
Do you remember me
The people's poet
linda11231949@aol.com
Let the memory never die of:
the millions of good people mainly Jews,
the people who hid them-at the cost of their own lives,
the soldiers who were lost-in the name of freedom for all
Movie Review: The cost of survival
Summary: 5 Stars
Intelligent, thought-provoking, and moving story of Gisella Perl, doctor, Holocaust survivor and author of the book "I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz."
This made-for-television (Showtime) movie picks up Perl's story after the war. She has emigrated to New York - her family, Hungarian Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz - and desperately wants, needs, to begin practicing medicine again. The movie presents her as a gynecologist, a good one, as well as a strong and at times even vain woman. Life is never simple, though. First she must pass the medical boards, and then the immigration must give their approval for her to practice in this country. And the panel of immigration officials have some tough questions to ask before that appoval is granted.
Christine Lahti brings a full palette to her complex character and is pretty much the whole show. The panel members (Beau Bridges, Bruce Davison and Richard Crenna in his last credited role) need to know if Perl collaborated with the German medical staff at Auschwitz, a staff headed by that arch-fiend, Joseph Mengele (Jonathan Cake.) And, pre-Roe v. Wade, they're curious about the roughly one thousand abortions she reportedly performed while at Auschwitz. It's the late forties, after all, and abortions were still illegal and almost universally reviled. These questions usher in flashbacks and, if not excuses, at least explanations for her actions. Women came to Auschwitz pregnant, or were raped by the guards. Pregnant women and women with infants were killed, and Perl made one of the many `choiceless choices' Lahti mentions in a short video interview on the dvd.
I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that all the good stuff nowadays is produced by television. OUT OF THE ASHES is a Showtime production from 2003. It's not really another Holocaust movie, either. Rather it's about the cost of survival and the `choiceless choices' one has to make along the way.
Movie Review: Excellent Movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
Showtime made some amazing movies. This is one. Christine Lahti plays Dr. Gisella Perl a gynecologist who was interred in Auschwitz. It's the story of how she saved other women and herself but how women also died partly due to her (which haunted her greatly). She was used by the evil Dr. Joseph Mengele and she tried and sometimes succeed in saving woman from his horrid "experiments". Her story is told in flashbacks while told to three men who are part of the INS. She wanted to be an American citizen and a doctor again.
I do not and can not understand how the German people allowed all the things that happened under Hitler's regime. I don't think they are any worse than any other people. If I did, I wouldn't have married my husband who is one fourth German-American and taken his German name. And America had "camps" for the Japanese-Americans. We didn't murder or torture them but they still had their freedom taken away. I think all people are capable of evil and it comes out in mob mentality.
I wish that we could see ourselves as one people and equal to each other. Today in America, I see the hate toward new immigrants, especially Hispanics. My son may marry a Puerto Rican and I'm sickened by the idea that she may be mistreated by idiots who hate her for being a Latina.
Will humanity ever evolve beyond such petty differences and allow each other to be who they are?
This is an excellent movie and Christine Lahti gives an outstanding performance.