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Robert Jay Lifton Nazi Doctors NCJF Press Directed by Hannes Karnick & Wolfgang Richter “Robert Jay Lifton is enthralling.” –Epd Film (German magazine) “A brilliant insight into a very dark chapter of German history, illuminated by a vibrant thinker who has kept, in spite of it all, his healthy sense of humor." –Film-Echo/Film Week (Germany) U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE October 6-12, 2010 ROBERT JAY LIFTON: NAZI DOCTORS 2009 | Germany | 86 minutes | In English DISTRIBUTION: PUBLIC EXHIBITION & DVD SALES: PUBLICITY CONTACTS: The National Center for Jewish Film Mike Maggiore Lown 102, MS 053, Brandeis University Adam Walker Waltham, MA 02454 Film Forum [email protected] (212) 627-2035 (781) 736-8600 [email protected] WWW.JEWISHFILM.ORG [email protected] Page 1 of 11 Synopsis - Robert Jay Lifton: Nazi Doctors An intense and illuminating conversationalist, world renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton discusses the processes by which ordinary doctors became murders, the subject of his groundbreaking 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize & National Jewish Book Award). Dr. Lifton, a prolific author, founding member of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985) and a pioneer in the field of psychohistory, interviewed dozens of Holocaust perpetrators, including 40 former Nazi physicians. In ROBERT JAY LIFTON: NAZI DOCTORS, we meet Lifton at his home on Cape Cod, where he engages in a lively discussion with veteran German filmmakers Wolfgang Richter and Hannes Karnick about the doctors who served in Auschwitz (“doctors were at the heart of it”), the circumstances under which they were currently living (financially affluent, some still practicing), and their attitude toward him (nervous, “unctuous”). With carefully calibrated analysis and a surprising amount of humor, Lifton leads us through the “acculturation to killing” that the camps fostered, the process of “splitting” or “doubling” which allowed doctors to strike a Faustian bargain, and his belief that “any one of us might find ourselves in service to evil.” Critical Acclaim “This is a fascinating, compelling, profoundly disturbing movie that miraculously leaves one agreeing with Lifton that ‘there is room for hope.’” – Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum “Robert Jay Lifton is enthralling. Because Lifton is able to talk about very complicated issues in a clear and comprehensible manner, one is captivated when listening. You can virtually see thoughts turn into words” – Epd Film (German film monthly) “Very exciting...a brilliant insight into a very dark chapter of German history, illuminated by a vibrant thinker who has kept, in spite of it all, his healthy sense of humor." –Film Echo/Film Week “A film portrait of the scientist and cofounder of International Physicians for the Prevention of the Nuclear War to whom we listen with growing admiration.” –Konkret Magazine Credits ROBERT JAY LIFTON: NAZI DOCTORS 2009 | Germany | 86 Minutes In English 16:9 Letterbox | Color | Dolby SR DigiBeta, DVD Page 2 of 11 CAST Sebastian Fetscher Robert Jay Lifton Amy Hackett Haus des Dokumentarfilms CREDITS Marie-Agnes Heine Directors: Hannes Karnick & Wolfgang Richter Ronny Loewy Director of Photography: Wolfgang Richter Werner Renz Script: Wolfgang Richter Ulf Schmidt Editor: Wolfgang Richter The New York Public Library Sound: Michael Busch Gunter Voigt Research: Hannes Karnick Rudolf Worschech Photos: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Music: Jan Tilman Schade FUNDED BY Re-Recording Mixer: Jochen Engelke The German Minister of State for Cultural Affairs Sound Supervisor: Wolfgang Herold Hesse Film Funding Assistant Sound Supervisor: Max Wanko Digital Postproduction: Frank Vogt, Magna Mana WITH VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO & Omnimago Betty Jean and Robert Jay Lifton Film Transfer: Magna Mana Prints: ABC & TaunusFilm Kopierwerk DEDICATION Transcription: Emily Rutkoske To the victims of the Nazis. Production Office: Sylvia Sadlon To those who survived. Production: docfilm Karnick & Richter OHG And to those who continue to struggle against the forces THANKS FOR ASSISTANCE TO of mass murder and genocide. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Robert Jay Lifton Bundesarchiv Fritz Bauer Institut © docfilm 2009, all rights reserved Christiane Colhoun Websites www.wenn-aerzte-toeten.de www.jewishfilm.org/catalogue/films/nazidoctors.htm Biography - Robert Jay Lifton Robert Jay Lifton is Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychology, The City University of New York. He was formerly Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He held the Foundations’ Fund Research Professorship of Psychiatry at Yale University for more than two decades. The recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, Dr. Lifton’s work combines scholarship and social activism. Dr. Lifton has been particularly interested in the relationship between individual psychology and historical change, and in problems surrounding the extreme historical situations of our era. He has developed a general psychological perspective around the paradigm of death and the continuity of life, with emphasis on symbolization and the “formative process,” and on the malleability of the contemporary self. He has studied many of the most destructive events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has played an important role in the development of the new field of psychohistory. Page 3 of 11 Dr. Lifton was born in New York City in 1926. He attended Cornell University and received his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1948. He interned at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn in 1948-49, and had his psychiatric residence training at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949-51. He was a U.S. Air Force psychiatrist serving in the United States, Japan, and Korea, from 1951-53. He was research associate in psychiatry at Harvard from 1956-61, where he was affiliated with the Center for East Asian Studies. Prior to that, he was a member of the faculty of the Washington School of Psychiatry. Dr. Lifton lives in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Lifton’s 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide was awarded Los Angeles Times Book Prize & National Jewish Book Award. He has written and taught extensively on many topics, including: genocide, nuclear weapons and their impact on death symbolism, Hiroshima survivors, Chinese thought reform and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, psychological trends in contemporary men and women, war and war veterans. Since September 11, 2001, he has been studying Islamic apocalyptic violence and American responses to the events of 9/11. His most recent book is the edited volume (with Irene Gendzier and Richard Falk) Crimes of War: Iraq (2006), which includes a number of Dr. Lifton's essays, exploring the complex legal, historical, political and psychological dimensions of America's military response to 9/11. Bibliography - Robert Jay Lifton • Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism - A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, Norton, 1961. • Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, Random House (New York City), 1968. Winner, National Book Award. • Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Random House, 1968. • Birds, Words, and Birds - (Cartoons), Random House, 1969. • Boundaries: Psychological Man in Revolution, Random House, 1970. • History and Human Survival: Essays on the Young and the Old, Survivors and the Dead, Peace and War, and on Contemporary Psychohistory, Random House, 1970. • Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans-Neither Victims Nor Executioners, Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1973. Finalist for a National Book Award. Reissued in 2005 with new material on the Iraq War. • Living and Dying, (With Eric Olson), Praeger, 1974. • The Life of the Self: Toward a New Psychology, Simon & Schuster, 1976. • Psychobirds, Countryman Press, 1978. • Six Lives/Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan, (With Shuichi Kato and Michael Reich), Yale University Press, 1979. • The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, Simon & Schuster, 1979. • Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclearism, (With Richard A. Falk), Basic Books, 1982. Page 4 of 11 • The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Basic Books, 1986. • The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, Basic Books, 1987. • The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, (With Eric Markusen), Basic Books, 1990. • The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation, Basic Books, 1993. • Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, (With Greg Mitchell), Putnam's, 1995. • Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Metropolitan Books, 1999. • Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, The American Conscience, and The End of Executions, Morrow, 2000. • Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation With the World, Nation Books, 2003. Filmmaker Biographies: Hannes Karnick & Wolfgang Richter Hannes Karnick and Wolfgang Richter, both born in 1947, work as a producing and directing team. In 1972 they founded a production company "docfilm" which produces documentaries on politics, culture and society for TV and theatrical release with special interest in current affairs and historical subjects. Their films have been screened in many
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