Fictional Portrayals
In the novel The Reader, a young man has an affair with an older woman (formerly a concentration camp guard) Hanna Schmitz. She is later tried in a court of law. In the film adaptation, she is portrayed by Kate Winslet.
In the film Seven Beauties, directed by Lina Wertmüller, the main character saves his life by having an affair with the female commander of a concentration camp, where he has been imprisoned for deserting the Italian Army.
Aufseherinnen are also portrayed in roles of varying size and importance in several other films:
In Schindler's List, female guards can be seen in scenes involving the Plaszow labor camp and when the Schindler women arrive and depart from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Though not named, an overseer plays a prominent role in the 1975 film The Hiding Place, during scenes when Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie are imprisoned at Ravensbruck. Several other female guards are seen processing new prisoners after their arrival at the camp.
Maria Mandel is portrayed by actress Shirley Knight in the film version of Playing for Time, centered on the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Other Aufseherinnen are portrayed in smaller roles, processing prisoners and attending the orchestra's performances.
Irma Grese has been portrayed as a minor character in Out of the Ashes as well as The Last Hangman, which details her execution following the Belsen war crimes trial. Both films feature additional female guards in much smaller roles. Grese is also briefly portrayed in a non-speaking re-enactment in Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State.
Polish actress Aleksandra Śląska has played an Aufseherin in two films, first The Last Stage as the Oberaufseherin and later as Lisa in Pasazerka. Both films contain several minor Aufseherinnen characters.
Female guards also appear in very small roles in the films Triumph of the Spirit, Battle of the V-1, and the beginning scene of X-Men.
Read more about this topic: Female Guards In Nazi Concentration Camps
Famous quotes containing the words fictional and/or portrayals:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)