The Disgrace

A new piece of trash by Veit Harlan has just opened in West Berlin. The film bears the telling title “Different from You and Me” and is about those—what a world-shaking problem for the present day—who are different from others, popularly known simply as “175ers.” To be sure—as the newspaper Die Welt has already noted—Harlan has never been known in his career thus far for his good taste or tact, but there is a good deal more behind this new opus.

The script was written by Mr. Felix Lützkendorf. As a Nazi author, like Harlan he “distinguished” himself during the twelve years of brown rule. It is thus hardly surprising that the evil seducer of decent German boys in the new film is a rather murky figure of foreign origin with the first name Boris. Race-baiting thus rears its ugly head, albeit in veiled form.

This is all the more awful since Harlan’s filthy film is being screened in West Berlin during the very days when memories of the Night of Broken Glass are emerging. On November 10, 1938 Jewish citizens in Germany were spat upon, insulted and maltreated by jeering Nazi hordes, their homes defiled, their businesses demolished, their houses of worship set aflame. And as the author of the film Jew Süss, Mr. Harlan contributed to these excesses.

All of this must inspire any decent person in Berlin to protest, it must admonish us to vigilance. It is typical on the one hand and deeply disgraceful on the other that such a provocation can occur nowadays in the front-line city.