The Ottawa premiere of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Todaythe Schulberg/Waletzky restoration of the 1945 Nuremberg trial of top Nazi war criminals, will be shown on Monday, November 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the Bytowne Cinema,325 Rideau St.
Gemini Award-winning journalist and anchor of CBC’s new national political show, Power & Politics, Evan Solomon will be on hand to discuss the film and answer questions.
Ottawa’s premiere is a collaboration between the Shoah (Holocaust) Committee of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa and the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University as part of Holocaust Education Week 2010 which runs from November 9 (Kristallnacht) to 16.
Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, depicts the most famous courtroom drama in modern times, and the first to make extensive use of film as evidence. The trial established the “Nuremberg principles,” laying the foundation for all subsequent trials for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
This is the U.S. government’s official film about the trial, made for the War Department and U.S. Military Government by Stuart Schulberg, a veteran of John Ford’s OSS War Crimes film team. It was distributed in Germany in 1948 and 1949 as part of the U.S. de-Nazification campaign, but its release to American theatres and other countries was cancelled due to political concerns.
Over the years, the original picture negative and sound elements were lost or destroyed. Filmmakers Sandra Schulberg (Stuart’s daughter) and Josh Waletzky made a new 35mm negative, struck from the best quality extant print, borrowed from the German National Film Archive. Not one picture frame was removed or changed in this process. The restoration team also re-constructed the soundtrack using original sound from the trial. The Schulberg/Waletzky restoration allows audiences to hear Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous opening and closing statements to the Tribunal, and the testimony from the German defendants and their defence attorneys — all in their own voices — as well as bits of the English, Russian and French prosecutors.
Tickets are $10 and can be obtained at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, 21 Nadolny Sachs Private.
For more information about Holocaust Education Week and a complete schedule of events, please visit www.jewishottawa.com or contact Sarah Beutel at 613-798-4696, ext. 253 orsbeutel@jewishottawa.com