Buffalo News
(New York)
January 27, 2004 Tuesday, FINAL EDITION
GENE WARNER; News Staff Reporter
DATELINE: JAMESTOWN
During the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, he sat just a few feet from the defendants,
watching them squirm as they tried to distance themselves from the atrocities
being spelled out for the court.
But Budd Schulberg was much more than an eyewitness to history. He also wrote
some of that history.
Using the Germans' own newsreel footage, Schulberg had pieced together a four-hour
film, "The Nazi Plan," that was used as evidence during the proceedings.
While Schulberg is better known for his work as a novelist ("What Makes
Sammy Run?") and an Oscar-winning screenwriter ("On the Waterfront"),
his greatest legacy might be his contribution to the physical proof of a Nazi
conspiracy.
On Monday, the 89-year-old Schulberg came to Jamestown, to the Robert H. Jackson
Center, to talk publicly -- for the first time -- about his role in helping
compile "The Nazi Plan" and a related film, "The Concentration
Camps."
Schulberg doesn't read his speeches. He pulls anecdotes from the recesses
of his mind, spicing up his narrative with personal stories about his dealings
with larger-than-life characters, including filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl and
writer Ernest Hemingway.
During a 45-minute afternoon speech to an overflow crowd of about 300 and
in an earlier hourlong taped interview for the center, Schulberg easily poked
through 60 years of memories to take his audience back to the courtroom showing
of the film he put together.
"I can't tell you what a feeling (of pride) it gave me that day,"
he said. "It was the first trial ever to use film, and it may have been
the most important trial of all time."
He still can see the film, with all the emaciated bodies it revealed. It was
stark, incontrovertible evidence of what the Nazis had done. And it was all
too much for one of the defendants, Hans Frank, the governor-general of occupied
Poland.
"His head was on the table," Schulberg remembered. "He had
absolutely passed out. He was unconscious. I really think he could see himself
on the gallows, and he could not face it."
That vision later proved correct when Frank was hanged.
Earlier Monday, during a taped interview with Jackson Center board President
Gregory L. Peterson, Schulberg was asked which visual image remained the most
vivid from all the German film he saw.
He immediately thought of a German documentary film in which a cameraman lying
in a large open pit captured images of bodies -- some of women cradling babies
in their arms -- being dumped toward him into the pit.
"If there was any one defining moment, it was that they so coldbloodedly
wanted to record this instead of (covering it up)," he said.
Schulberg's appearance in Jamestown was part of the continuing efforts by
the Jackson Center to educate the public about the fascinating career of Jackson,
a native of the Jamestown area who went on to become U.S. solicitor general,
Supreme Court justice and chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.
Throughout the day, Schulberg and Jackson Center officials painted a portrait
of Jackson as a visionary who resisted the efforts by some of the Allies who
were more interested in quick war-crimes trials, followed by a speedy trip
to the gallows or the firing squad for the Nazi leaders.
"It was Jackson who stood up for a genuine, legitimate trial that would
truly give the defendants a chance to defend themselves, with the most competent
counsel they could assemble," Schulberg said.
In keeping with that idea, Jackson insisted on documentary film evidence that
was beyond reproach. So Schulberg, a Navy lieutenant, was sent to bring back
Nazi propaganda filmmaker Riefenstahl as a material witness.
"She sat me down," he recalled, "and said, 'I was never a Nazi.
It was just a subject I was using to make a pure documentary. I'm very misunderstood.
I'm a film artist, not a Nazi.' "
But then Schulberg caught Riefenstahl in a lie. To show her reputation as
a film artist, she told him about a huge reception that Hollywood filmmakers
had given her in 1938 to toast her work. What Riefenstahl didn't know was
that it was Schulberg who had organized a boycott that had turned that reception
into what he called a miserable failure.
"At that moment," Schulberg remembered, "I reached into my
pocket and said, 'Miss Riefenstahl, I have this warrant for you to take you
to Nuremberg.' "
Schulberg remembers Riefenstahl as being quite beautiful, very charming, committed
to the arts and a master of her craft. But he once wrote an article about
her in the Saturday Evening Post, dubbing her the "Nazi pin-up girl."
Jackson Center officials and Schulberg took turns Monday praising one another.
"Mr. Schulberg bridges a gap in history that permits those who listen
today to more fully appreciate that the Holocaust really occurred and that
we should never forget the crimes against humanity," Peterson said.
Earlier in the day, Schulberg flashed his dry sense of humor as he described
his meeting with Hemingway -- "an unbelievable bully" -- in the
winter of 1947-48 in Key West, Fla.
Hemingway kept testing Schulberg about his knowledge of boxing, continually
shoving and poking Schulberg as he questioned him about the top boxers of
the day. A friend later told Schulberg that Hemingway actually liked him.
"You tell Papa I admire him very much," the still-smarting Schulberg
replied. "But from now on, I want to admire him from as far away as possible."
e-mail: gwarner@buffnews.com