March 24, 2017 – I just saw an important film, “The Pastor‘s Children,” in which I learned to some astonishment that during World War II, Protestant pastors in Germany collected iron church bells for Hitler so he could make bombs from them. After the war, 50,000 bells were left over, because there were so many, that the military production couldn‘t use them all. It illustrates dramatically how supportive the Protestant (as well as the Catholic) churches were of the Nazis.
April 8, 2013 – Amidst the wide-ranging hagiographic praise of film critic Roger Ebert, who died last week, I can add a remembrance of another type. I knew Roger from National Student Association conferences of the 1960s. I liked him. In 1970, he invited me and a friend, Nanette Rainone, both of us strong feminists, to appear at a Russ Meyer Film Festival at Yale Law School. We accepted partly as a lark, partly because we thought that Yale Law students might seriously consider our views.
April 20, 2011 – Transit, a fascinating documentary by German filmmaker Angela Zumpe, seeks to understand the story of her 21-year-old brother Reinhard, who in 1968 immigrated from West to East Germany and eight months later – never contacting his family — jumped from a window to his death.
