WE HUMANS NEED REMINDERS: OF THE BAD, AS WELL AS THE GOOD

   

…Boko Haram Terrorists   

 

 

                                                    ….ISIL Terrorists                                                   

With what’s going on with ISIL and Boko Haram, it’s all too common as to what happened during the WWII Holocaust.

 

It is too bad that human nature accurately says that we all have short memories and that we constantly need to be reminded of the things that are important.

Being a real history buff, this was something that came into my mind since being made aware of the horrible realities of what is occurring today by the likes of ISIL and the Boko Haram terrorists.

But where my historical mind then went from these initial thoughts is a bit bizarre, so please bear with me while I try to make some sense of it all.

After hearing about the latest horrid ISIL be-heading, I recently recalled that back in the 1980’s, long before the reality of today’s Internet, YouTube, Twitter and cable and satellite TV, there was still basically only the three big TV networks, ABC, NBC, CBS for receiving our news and entertainment. 

Also, at that time, the concept of these major broadcast organizations competing for the American TV viewer’s time, it was then by offering what became known as the “TV Mini-Series”. 

Some of these were just one hour shows where the series' stories went on from one week to the next.  But then in 1980, came the major block-buster, multi-million dollar, 10-30 hour mini-series, which were usually either about a major historical event, or a series based on a major novel.

Probably the biggest and most successful of these block-buster type series were the two mini-series of Herman Wouk’s two gigantic historical novels: The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance. 

These two, 30 hour series, took 5 years to film, and they were broken up into weekly groups of 2 hour nightly TV segments.  Both of these series were directed by the perfectionist director, Dan Curtis, and the casts were all major movie stars.  Wherever possible, the filming was all shot on the actual historical locations and no expense was spared in the production of the two, multiple award winning series (14 total Emmys).

For those that don’t remember, or are too young, the two original Wouk novels were over 1000 pages, and were historically accurate.  The books were both written about a fictional American family, the Victor Henry's, that were used in the novels for following the events that occurred from the beginning to the end of World War II.  The first book went from the early 1930’s and chronicled what occurred from the start of the Second World War in Europe, up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  The second 1000 page novel, was to chronicle these same Henry family members through the conflicts in both Europe and the Pacific.  However, this second series film was specifically for showing the brutality of the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’s war against the Jews.

Being a US history nut, I had early on read both of these novels more than once.  I was obviously excited when I learned that an outstanding film director such as Dan Curtis was taking on the Wouk project.  I was also glad to learn that Curtis had sought for and received the go-ahead from the ABC network that he would not be censored for any of the scenes he filmed about the Holocaust.  As it happened, both Curtis and ABC kept their words.

The end results of both these filmed series were their amazing overall accuracy.  In fact, they were so accurate and well done, that some individuals that had actually survived the Holocaust in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, they volunteered to be extras in the films.  These volunteers later stated that the scenes were so real during the filming, it felt as if they were actually back in the German prison camps.

Later on, when DVD’s of the series started to become available, I made sure that I acquired the complete set of both mini-series.  I also sought out all the bonus disks about the filming of the series.  I was even able to obtain a disk that showed the author Wouk visiting the sets during the filming.  Wouk actually went to the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp where it had taken a year to get the Polish government’s approval to film on location.  Director Curtis was also able to re-build the giant human crematoriums for the film using the actual plans found in the Auschwitz archives.

OK, so, where the heck am I going with all of this information?

What the director and the author Wouk wanted to do in 1980 was to record and remind everyone what had actually happened during the world wars and during the Holocaust.  They both wanted an accurate historical record that could be recalled for future generations to learn about, or to be reminded as to how far this type of horror can and did go.  History books and novels can do some of this, and of course, there were the old war news films.  These black & white films did show all the bodies that were discovered by the allies as they came upon the concentration camps. 

 

But both Wouk and Curtis wanted to accurately film the brutality that had occurred while these prisoners were still alive in the camps and how they were treated by the prison guards before they died.  They wanted to honor those that had died, and to show the truth…and these films did succeed in doing that.

I have to say that with the horrible on-going executions that are being performed today by the terrorists in the Middle East and Africa, these are all just revisits to the brutality of the past Hitler Regime.  Yes, the Germans were doing their dirty work on a more organized and a much larger scale for Hitler’s so called “Final Solution” in Europe.  But today's smaller terrorist organizations are making amazingly gory use of all the new technologies such as e-mail, the Internet, Twitter and YouTube for sending their propaganda even further along than that of WWII’s German SS.

I recently took out my DVD’s of those two Wouk series.  In watching them again, it came to me that as of today, since these films were over 30 years ago, all but a couple of the series stars are no longer with us.  And that includes the director, Dan Curtis, who died in 2006.  But the historical accuracy of the depiction of the world war and the accuracy of the scenes of the Holocaust were a stark reminder that lives on. 

 

That reminder is that what is occurring today is just another version of what the Germans were doing to the Jewish masses in WWII.  And I was reminded that my own father had fought back then against the horrors that were depicted in these two films. 

It also showed once again that it was not so many years ago that the brutality and death that was going on then, is occurring again by today's terrorists.

As previously stated, human nature says we need to be constantly reminded of things so we will have the opportunity for not repeating the same mistakes.

Watching these two films again, I was reminded just how important it is that we do whatever is necessary to rid this world of these latest terrorist.  These horrible groups such as ISIL and Boko Haram want to rule their worlds with a level of brutality that truly cannot ever be allowed to succeed....ever.

Copyright G.Ater 2015