Die Schmach des Vergessens

I watched this film some time ago because I've always had an interest in Holocaust studies. This film left a truly bad impression. Basically, they use the docudrama genre to play with facts the way Oliver Stone does. There is slanderous innuendo and other misrepresentation. If you take it with a grain of salt, you might be okay, but it is a good example why this kind of movie should rarely be made.

For those that hate, there were never enough minorities tortured, hung, gassed or stuffed into ovens to satisfy their aversion. By means of their denial that the holocaust existed, or their statements that events were "over-exaggerated", they aim to further insult and injure the survivors and descendants of those who suffered Hitlers "final solution".

There was a time after the war that we said "never again"! Never again would we allow genocide to occur anywhere on this planet. How soon we forget our pledge. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are still very much a reality, and just as it did in the early days of Hitlers Germany, it goes on mostly unfettered and continues today in places like Rwanda, and Malaysia. At the very least we need to send a message to those that hate and commit acts of wholesale murder.

Hitler still exists. His legacy resides in men like president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who called for the destruction of Israel, and who goes virtually unopposed by the world community. It is no surprise that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier himself, and has even called for conferences in an attempt to question the events in Nazi Germany. He has called for Jews and Christians to be forced to distinguish themselves by wearing colored badges. Very reminiscent to Nazi Germany's requiring the Jews to wear the Star of David. Mostly Ahmadinejad is a man of words rather than actions at present time. However, there once was a time when Hitler was confined to spewing his hate in the beer halls of Bavaria. Do we ever learn? I have found that hate doesn't have to have logic or reason, it just has to exist. No matter where hate exists, no matter what race or religion it is aimed at, it must not go unopposed. These men and their ideas must be stopped. Today they come for your neighbor, but perhaps tomorrow they will come for you.

I watched this drama on television and was numb afterwards. You hear of flat-Earthers and 'lunar landings were fake' conspiracy theorists and just say to yourself "well - they pays their money... that's their beliefs and they're entitled to them..." Then 'Never Forget' shows you, through drama, the lengths the stuck minds and morally blind will go to to deafen themselves and others to the truth. We have our own paranoid denialists in Northern Ireland, who only see the wrong done them never the wrong they've done. They spout the kindred of the poison Mel Mermelstein had to put up with. A good portrait of a man driven by his convictions: Leonard Nimoy certainly deserves praise for telling Mel Mermelstein's story, let alone turning in a fine performance in the lead. Despite any dramatic licence taken I'd set this TV movie as course text for history at Ordinary Level: it is quite clearly still needed.

True story of concentration camp survivor Mel Mermelstein excellently played by Leonard Nimoy-of Mister Spock fame-fighting the good fight against the holocaust revisionist IHR-Institute of Historical Review-who challenged Mel to either put up or shut up with his stories of his life as an inmate in a number of Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz & Buchenwald in WWII. Told by the Jewish ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center that he went for help to ignore the IHR's challenge and not give them any publicity by doing it Mel instead went full tilt on his own snapping at its $50,000.00 offer by it in proving that there were gas chambers and crematories at the camps he was incarcerated in, for being Jewish, as well as later getting another $40,000.00 in damages for the pain and suffering that the IHR caused him and his family!

Mermelstein first caught the eye of the IHR by going around telling school children as well as their parents of the horrors that he suffered at the hands of the Nazis in WWII losing his entire family in what was called the Nazi "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi occupied Europe. Trying to shut him up the IHR planned to call his bluff in making his plight or accusations public thinking that he's really full of it and unable to prove what he's saying only to have him win in court a libel action against It. And also by it having to pay out almost 100 grand to him, not to mention the court costs, he brought the holocaust revisionist and in many cases denial organization to the point of bankruptcy! It also had its wear-house in California fire bombed three times by outraged citizens that destroyed most of its anti-Holocaust as well as anti-Semitic material that it was, in many cases free of charge , handing out to the public.

As big as a victory it was for Mel Mermelstein at the time it may well have turned out to be a "Pyrrhic Victory" for him in the long run. That by giving the IHR free and undeserved publicity that has now, some 30 years later, spawned scores of like wise holocaust revisionist sites on the internet that are still around-Like IHR-with us now and unfortunately still growing all over the net or cyberspace. This makes me feel that if Mermelstein listened to both the ADL & Simon Wiesenthal Center to just ignore the slings and arrows being thrown at him by the IHR it as well as it fellow websites would have died an lonely and ignominious death or never would have come into existence in the first place!

I thought this movie was great. Great acting (especially by Leonard Nimoy) and a great story based on the holocaust and the real people. Nimoy put in a great effort and it's not so surprising since he is a great actor and he's Jewish and this movie felt a great deal to him. If you get a chance to see it on TV or rent it on video, SEE IT. You won't regret it.