An investigation into the persecution and deportation to the Dachau camp of over 2,800 Christians from 14 European nations by the Nazi regime and the reasons behind it: Thursday 29 June in prime time on Rai 3, Rai Documentari proposes “The Cross e la Svastica”, a Rai Documentari, Iterfilm and Upside co-production with the contribution of the Mic and the “Italy-France” bilateral fund, directed by Giorgio Treves, written by Luca Scivoletto and Giorgio Treves with the artistic participation of Margherita Buy, Massimo De Rossi and Stefano Dionisi.
The documentary, shot in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and the Vatican City, develops like a journey by the director Giorgio Treves, who, through the testimonies of some survivors and the reconstructions of historians, tries to understand and shed light on the relations between the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church and National Socialism. Personal research arises from a need for justice, respect and mercy towards all the victims of Nazism, of any faith, ethnicity and nationality, and at the same time from the need to know, to lift the veil on this dark area of history.
Why did Hitler also deport Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Jehovah’s Witnesses to the camps as well as 6 million Jews? Giorgio Treves begins his research starting from the secret archives of the Vatican, renamed Apostolic Archives, where at the request of Pope Francis in 2020 the seals on the pontificate of Pius XII were removed, with the aim of clarifying the position of the church during the Second World War .
The documentary then enters into the heart of the rise of Nazism, which with the Aryan Paragraph will bring about the extermination of the Jews, and concludes by questioning the attitude implemented by the Vatican. What could the church have done? What, perhaps, did he fail to do?
“The fate of Christians during the war seemed like a hole in this historical narrative, especially evident in the country where I live, Italy, where no one has ever heard of it – says Giorgio Treves. “My ambition is to offer a film that is enlightening through its testimonies and its archives, but also to capture a sensitive, almost taboo topic. A story that contains parts that have been deliberately kept in the dark for a long time”.
The reconstructions by Italian, French and German historians alternate with emotional moments: personal stories, memories, anecdotes of those who experienced this tragedy firsthand – such as the testimony of Simone Liebster and Emma Bauer on the tragic fate of the Orthodox and Jehovah’s Witnesses – are interspersed with unpublished material from archives, including Bundenarchive, Les Ateliers Des Archives, Critica Past and Istituto Luce.
The itinerary ends in the long tree-lined avenue of Dachau, with a finale which, presenting the recent neo-Nazi demonstrations, is a warning aimed at preventing the recurrence of similar atrocities.
2023-06-29 17:06:37
#cross #swastika
