Lies have piled up, and one way or another all three agents will emerge as tragic figures. Alias The director, John Madden, is canny enough to know where the true suspense lies: in the faces of the characters. Prisoner doctors. Hollywood Fumbles Award-Winning Mossad Thriller - The Forward Among the papers was a letter from Wolfram Bossert notifying Sedlmeier of Mengele's death. Summaries The year is 1965. In East Berlin, during the Cold War, they killed Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), aka the Surgeon of Birkenau, infamous for his Dr. Mengele-like experiments on Jews. Dieter Vogel Genocidal Torturer, Psychological manipulationStrengthEvasionSkilled doctor at the times of WWIISkilled knifeman. [123] Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was glad to see the diary fall into Jewish hands. Unfinished business; Israeli agents hailed for killing a Nazi war criminal confront a long-kept secret. In some cases, he ordered these prisoners photographed. This process was repeated until all of the barracks were disinfected. While Rachel is in charge of monitoring, Vogel manages to cut through his bonds using a shard of the broken plate and ambushes Rachel with the shard, leaving her with a permanent scar on her face. Similar procedures were used for later epidemics of scarlet fever and other diseases, with infected prisoners being killed in the gas chambers. She leaves a note for the journalist and prepares to leave, but suddenly spots Vogel in his 80s by now among the other patients and follows him to an isolated area of the hospital. Unfinished business; Israeli agents hailed for killing a Nazi war "The Debt" weaves a tangled web of lies and deceptions around a seemingly heroic raid in 1965 carried out by three agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency known for more ability than it exhibits here. Kremer ordered most of them killed by phenol injection. The Notorious Surgeon of Birkneau Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2011 Verified Purchase In 1965 the Israeli Intelligence, Mossad, sent agents into East Berlin to capture the notorious war criminal, Vogel, the Surgeon of Birkneau. If you replay the actual events in your mind, you realize all the suspense is created with editing, camera angles and POV. [114], On 31 May 1985, acting on intelligence received by the West German prosecutor's office, police raided the house of Hans Sedlmeier, a lifelong friend of Mengele and sales manager of the family firm in Gnzburg. Please email us at [emailprotected], subject line republish, with any questions or to let us know what stories youre picking up. If the real man didnt die at the hands of Jews, well Wouldnt it be pretty to think so? Many subjects died from complications. A lie I have lived with for thirty years. Organs and even complete heads of children were preserved and sent in jars to institutions including the Medical Academy in Graz, Austria. Once feared for his medical experiments on Jewish concentration-camp inmates, Vogel has by the '60s set himself up in a comfortable practice as a gynecologist. In 1943-1944, prisoners who were interested in helping their sick fellow-prisoners began to play a leading role in both the medical "self-government" and among the staff on the wards. They succeed in the abduction, but fail in bringing him to the west side. The majority of the story is set in the earlier time period of 1966 where three Mossad agents (Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain and Sam Worthington) come together to bring the Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel back to Israel to stand trial. The actors, particularly Chastain and Mirren in the show-off roles, are not merely superb: They also constitute the best-looking collection of shiksas and goys playing Jews that Ive ever seen. But the connections run deeper than that, a theme that recurs in the film. And by shifting the focus, from the quest for justice in the face of unspeakable evil to Israelis feeling bad about their own wrongdoing, The Debt stands the underlying story on its head in a far more dramatic and insidious way than casting choices alone ever could. [34] As part of his duties, Mengele made weekly visits to the hospital barracks and ordered any prisoners who had not recovered after two weeks in bed to be sent to the gas chambers. The ensuing cover-up resonates down the decades, dragging in its wake some dutiful hand-wringing about truth, freedom and Jewish identity in the shadow of the Shoah. Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library, The Vrba-Wetzler Report (Auschwitz Protocols), Nazis Planned to Move Auschwitz Gas Chambers to Mauthausen, Testimony of Engineer Kurt Prufer on Crematorium Design, Testimony of Engineer Fritz Sander on Crematorium Design, Testimony of Engineer Karl Schultze on Crematorium Design, House Resolution Commemorating Liberation of Auschwitz, Senate Resolution Commemorating Liberation of Auschwitz, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Speech At Birkenau, Address by Prime Minister Rabin at Auschwitz, U.S. [98] When Wolfgang Gerhard returned to Germany in 1971 to seek medical treatment for his ailing wife and son, he gave his identity card to Mengele. Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis on JSTOR Of the Nazis who got away, the one who most insistently haunts Jewish pop culture is Josef Mengele, the SS physician who performed monstrous experiments on inmates (many of them children) at Auschwitz and Birkenau and escaped (with the help of the organization known as ODESSA) to Brazil and later Paraguay, where he died at the age of 71. They are Rachel Singer (. These three agents, Rachel (Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington) are to capture the notorious Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), and bring him back for a proper trial of war time atrocities. Later, at David's flat, Stefan provides evidence that Vogel now resides at an insane asylum inUkraine, and is soon scheduled to be interviewed by a local journalist. In fact he escaped and is now taking credit for his work at Birkenau in a hospital in Ukraine. The Potential 2023 WGA Strike for Dummies. In the ensuing shootout, David sacrifices his chance to escape in order to collect the compromised Rachel. The Surgeon of BirkenauVogelDr. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google It details how she shot their captured target, Dieter Vogel, otherwise known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau," when he attacked her and tried to escape. Mirren mesmerizes in thinking-man's thriller | Washington Examiner Assisted by a network of former SS members, he used the ratline to travel to Genoa, where he obtained a passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross under the alias "Helmut Gregor", and sailed to Argentina in July 1949. These preparations were given to prisoners suffering from contagious diseases, who had in many cases been deliberately infected. He is Vogel (Jesper Christensen), the notorious Surgeon of Birkenau, who conducted unspeakable procedures on his captives. Pegulas fight to heal and rehabilitate from a brain injury suffered after a cardiac arrest last June has been one that is long and largely private. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. The unidentified previous owner, who acquired the journals in Brazil, was reported to be close to the Mengele family. Maybe the Israeli version (which I havent seen) had so much psychological resonance that you could overlook the absurdities to come, but The Debt, after a gripping first half, turns into one howler after another. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. But like many filmmakers transitioning between genres, Madden has focused his creative energies on retooling himself. [94], Meanwhile, Zvi Aharoni, one of the Mossad agents who had been involved in the Eichmann capture, was placed in charge of a team of agents tasked with tracking down Mengele and bringing him to trial in Israel. Concertgoer Allegedly Orgasms While L.A. Philharmonic Plays Tchaikovskys 5th, Melanie Lynskey, Seth Meyers, and More Support WGA Amid Negotiations. Goals Hobby Following his recovery, he was transferred to the headquarters of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office in Berlin, at which point he resumed his association with VonVerschuer, who was now director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. The Debt, by contrast, explores nothing, preferring to stake out positions through stock characters declaiming expository dialogue. [3], When a typhus epidemic began in the women's camp, Mengele cleared one block of six hundred Jewish women and sent them to their deaths in the gas chambers. Berger finished his work by June 15, 1943. They have been sent to track down and kidnap Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel, the "Surgeon of Birkenau", played by Bond baddie Jesper Christensen. In 1965 a three person Mossad team of Rachel Singer, David Peretz and Stefan Gold went to East Berlin to capture an infamous Nazi doctor called The Surgeon of Birkenau. [99] The Stammers' friendship with Mengele deteriorated in late 1974, and when they bought a house in So Paulo, he was not invited to join them. In 1965, I was part of a mission to kidnap Dieter Vogel, The Surgeon of Birkenau, and bring him to Israel to stand trial. [119], In 1992, DNA testing confirmed Mengele's identity beyond doubt,[120] but family members refused repeated requests by Brazilian officials to repatriate the remains to Germany. The architecture of "The Debt" has an unfortunate flaw. Only how to die."
