Perhaps the most telling moment in the movie was when a man confronts Maria and says "why is it always about the holocaust with you people?" It is not and was not about the holocaust. It was more about why the man on the steps said "you people."
I have a feeling that that was meant to indicate that most living Austrians in 1998 who had been born after 1945 and thus did not participate in any way in pre-1945 activities had indeed moved on.
If
The Woman in Gold is your only exposure to Austria, then, yes, you could be forgiven for thinking that Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner and Globocnik represent the sum total of Austrians.
However, if you also look at the film
Rush, you will see Daniel Brühl play the legendary Austrian Ferrari Formula One driver Niki Lauda in his epic 1976 duel with James Hunt (played by Chris Hemsworth.) In
Rush Austria is mentioned, Brühl plays the Austrian Lauda and Alexandra Maria Lara plays Lauda`s first wife, the Austrian Marlene Knaus...but the Holocaust is never mentioned.
Niki Lauda, after his horrific crash in 1976, got his pilot's license, founded his own airline, and then, after a Boeing flown by his airline crashed in Thailand, pressed, pressured and harangued Boeing until they gave him a jet of the same model to test, wherein he demonstrated that said model was unfit for high speed above certain altitudes, giving closure to the families of the victims of the Lauda Air crash.
As well, Austria's Glock is the world's most popular pistol-maker, and, arguably, the world's best pistol-maker.
Lauda was born in 1949, well after Eichmann and Globocnik did their things. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator and Governor of California, and still respected movie icon, was born in 1947, also well after Eichmann, Kaltenbrunner and Globocnik did their thing.
However, if
The Woman in Gold is your sole reference point for things Austrian, you would never know any of this, and thus you would not in a position to understand why Austrians of Lauda and Schwarzennegger's generations and after do not think about the Holocaust 24-7. They have lives, and they built those lives not having anything at all to do with the Holocaust.
Benoit killed 2x as many w/o a gun than Belcher did with one/S&W fighting climate change since 1852
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Helena727
9 years ago
you would not in a position to understand why Austrians of Lauda and Schwarzennegger's generations and after do not think about the Holocaust 24-7. They have lives, and they built those lives not having anything at all to do with the Holocaust.
Well, no.
To live in a nation whose population embraced a frighteningly inhumane philosophy requires that you question what went before, because the present is obviously the child of the past.
For ex.: The terrible, ongoing racism in the US -- the direct descendant of slavery -- is of great concern to me even though my family came to the US in the 20th century and had no direct connection to slavery or to the slaughter of Native Americans. But *I* live here now -- and every action I take every day helps determine whether this nation stays mired in the status quo, makes a little progress, or (worse) slides backward.
. . . . . If you think the attitudes that not only allowed but outright
endorsed slavery and the slaughter of indigenous people don't affect every US resident today, then you're fooling yourself. The plantation owner of 1860 didn't suddenly become an enlightened human at the close of the Civil War; he passed on his attitudes to his children, and they to theirs, and so on. Yes, some people evolve beyond close-minded familial dogma, but not all -- which is why many are still enamored of the Confederate flag, to cite just one simplified example. (And why many in Europe are proud neo-Nazis.)
Every Austrian and German who shrugs and pretends that the Holocaust is over, no need to examine it, shut up about it already, is essentially paving the way for another atrocity. And that applies to everyone in every nation where some massive, systemic destruction of a targeted group took place.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."
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bostonmaggie
8 years ago
I know I'm terribly late to this discussion, having only watched this movie for the first time this evening. However, your post made me laugh out loud.
This thread has evolved into a somewhat serious conversation on the Holocaust and Austria's actions & attitudes on this topic. And your addition to the discussion is to cite a movie?? Really?
Also you would explain away the quote from the movie as being the result of a younger generation moving on. The past is done and gone. Do you understand that a mere 6 years before Maria Altmann begins her struggle, the Austrian president was a former Nazi? That in 1985 Kurt Waldheim's wartime service and membership in the Nazi party were widely discussed and Austrians still voted him into office and he finished his term in 1992?
It's hardly surprising that the "Reparations Commission" and the Museum and the general public didn't take Altmann seriously.
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