The Aryan Couple, directed, produced and written by John Daly, USA, 2004, 119 min., 35mm, English.

By Donald H. Harrison

The fictional Krauzenberg family of Hungary has it all: a steel mill, a bank, a palace filled with art treasures, and hundreds of Gentile employees who love them.  In The Aryan Couple, they are willing to sign away all their possessions in order to buy safe passage for themselves and their extended family to Switzerland en route to Palestine  The question is, even if the Nazis sign a guarantee of the Krauzenbergs' safety, will they honor that guarantee once they take possession of all the Krauzenbergs' local holdings?

Another subplot  in this tale of suspense is what will become of the so-called Aryan couple, the young man and beautiful wife who disguised as servants in the Krauzenberg palace really are agents of the underground—and Jewish to boot.  Not even the Krauzenbergs are aware of the true status of their servants, for whom they strangely feel parental affection.

The first plot  turns on a tense dinner at the palace, served by the Aryan couple—Hans and Ingrid Vassman (Kenny Daughts and Caroline Carver)—that brings together their Jewish employers, Josef and Rachel Krauzenberg (Martin Landau and Judith Parfitt) with Heinrich Himmler (Danny Webb) and various Nazi subordinates.  Not invited to dinner, but arriving  for coffee following the meal, is Adolf Eichmann (Steven Makintosh), architect of the Holocaust, whom we see at the beginning of the film coldly and efficiently supervising the transport of Hungarian Jewish families to Auschwitz.

The fictional story draws on well-known Holocaust footage to remind us of how desperate the Krauzenberg family's situation is, and then the Sound of Music-like tale, minus the music, is allowed to unfold in sumptuously photographed surroundings of splendor. Martin Landau and Judith Parfitt, two superb actors, portray the aristocratic Jewish couple with wonderful dignity.

Coincidentally, as I watched a CD of this film at home,  I received in the mail a press release from Sarah Behrendt, alerting the news media that her husband, Eddy, 75, who had been rescued as a child from the Holocaust in the famous Kindertransport and who had been a founder of the U.S. Kindertransport Association, had died last November 9 in Eugene, Oregon—a sad reminder that the generation of real-lifeHolocaust Survivors is dying, and soon what people know of the Holocaust will be through indirect testimonies, both true and fictional.

This is a fictional film, not a documentary, but one cannot help but wonder if such films— well-done thought they may be—ultimately detract from the true story of the Holocaust?  Or, can it be the case that the Holocaust is now so well implanted into our collective memories that fictionalized interpretations such as we have seen time and time again about other events of World War II do not conflict with the greater truth?  

John Daly, who wrote, directed and produced this film, is expected to attend the 7 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 12 showing at the AMC La Jolla Theatres and perhaps he will address that question as part of the 16th Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival's discussion of his work.

There is no question that great works of art were confiscated from Jews during the Nazi era.  The fictional Krauzenbergs signed away their collection under duress, whereas it simply was looted from other families who didn't have fortunes enough (some of it in banks in neutral Switzerland) to buy their way out of nazi-controlled countries. 

Here in San Diego, we have the ongoing case of Beverly and Claude Cassirer, who are suing an art museum in Spain in an attempt to recover an 1897 painting by the Jewish impressionist Camille Pissarro showing the effect of afternoon rain on Saint Honore Street ("Rue de Saint Honore Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie")

We tend to think of Germans during World War II as brain-dead automatons hypnotized by Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann and other anti-Semitic ideologues. An interesting aspect of this movie shows how individual lust and greed could crack the veneer of Nazi solidarity, and set one of these bastards against another. The film also portrays a good German soldier—a youngster drafted into Hitler's war machine who simply wants to go home to the wife who looks so much like Ingrid, the servant. These lessons should not be lost upon us, especially in dealing with extreme anti-Semitic movements of today.

As in any good movie, The Aryan Couple leaves us with  much to contemplate.