Analysis of Amen (Costas-Gavras' movie) linked to Ordinary Men (Browning's book)

→ Amen is a movie directed by Costas-Gavras and released in 2002. It is adapted from a German play and is a criticism of the indifference of Pope Pie XII to the Jews situation during World War II. The plot is about Kurt Gerstein, a SS Officer who tries to warn the pope about the extermination of the Jews in the camps. He is helped by a young Jesuit named Ricardo whose father is high in the Italian church hierarchy and could contact the Pope. Unfortunately, the Pope refuses to interfere in the situation by publicly condemning the Shoah. Thus, Ricardo ends up being gazed in Auschwitz, refusing to accept the tragic fates of the Jews, and Gerstein, even thought he helped the Allies by writing report about the Finale Solution is accused of war crimes.

At its release, the movie was very criticized by the catholic Church. Indeed, Pie XI did condemn Nazism in March 1937 already, and the finale solution was already known by the Allies thanks to Witold Pilocki, a polish resistant who escaped Auschwitz in 1943. Thus, it was not only the Vatican’s fault not to reveal the Third Reich’s actions. The Allies also knew about it and decided not to save the Jews. Their choice was to stop the German occupation in Europe, rather than delivering the camps. Where is their ethics in here, and for what reason did they chose a mission over another? Their culpability is evoked in the movie as well, but in another level: it is represented through the character of the American ambassador in Rome who follows the inactivity of the Vatican and refuses to hear about Ricardo’s suggestion to help.

The whole plot focuses on the struggle of these two men to be heard; not only by the Church and its hierarchy, but also by their trusted acquaintances. If in the beginning they have hope that people will join their secret fight, they realize they can’t count on anyone. This movie is about the “wait-and-see” of the war, the choice that a lot of people made to NOT act. They were not fighting Nazism, they were not supporting it, they just waited for the war to end. People were too scared to dare any act of resistance. It is the case of the Pope for example. He’s not presented as an Evil man; he’s even moved and worried about the Jews’ situation. He’s tormented about what he could do: a public protestation against Hitler that could create reprisals to the Catholics in the occupied countries? Try to secretly enact to save who could be saved?

The Pope is in the same situation as the Allies here, and in the same situation of the Battalion 101 in Jósefów. Where their morality stops? If some superiors (Trapp, Buchmann, Kammer) decided to allow their men to quit the shootings, others just ordered to apply strictly what they have been told to do (Wohlauf, Steinmetz). As Browning described it in his book, and as it was described in the movie, fear is a factor of inaction. It was dangerous to be openly against the Nazi regime, whether for your career or your life.

The big question here is to know if they were really disgusted and horrified by their task. They’ve been in a system that helped foster legitimation of killings by multiples means. There was also less regulation against cruelty: an “evilness routine” was banalized, starting with the dehumanization of the Jewish people. The inclusion of ordinary Germans was, therefore, a politics that was open for diverging opinions but also possibilities

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