Romanian police have opened an inquiry into anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on the home of Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. One of the comments said Wiesel, who died in 2016, was "in hell with Hitler."
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Police are investigating after anti-Semitic slogans were scrawled on the home of late Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. The small house, in the Romanian town of Sighetu Marmatiei, is a protected historical monument.
The graffiti, which appeared on Friday night, was quickly removed by authorities. A police spokesperson said investigators were studying closed-circuit TV footage from the town.
The World Jewish Congress has strongly condemned the "despicable anti-Semitic vandalism" in a message posted on Twitter.
'Unprecedented anti-Semitic act'
"This grotesque act represents an attack not only on the memory of Elie Wiesel but on all the victims of the Holocaust," said the National Institute for Holocaust Studies, which is named after Wiesel.
The Romanian group for Monitoring and Fighting Anti-Semitism called it an act of vandalism against the "memory of Elie Wiesel, the memory of the Holocaust victims and the souls of the Holocaust survivors."
The Israeli embassy in Romania has condemned an "unprecedented anti-Semitic act," and expressed the hope that those responsible would be swiftly brought to justice.
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Even before the Nazis' rise in 1933, anti-Semitism was present in film. After 1945, many directors struggled to deal with the Holocaust, but some continued to make movies with anti-Semitic tendencies.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kugler
Anti-Semitism in 16th-century Prague
One of Germany's most famous silent films, "The Golem: How He Came Into the World," was made in 1920. Paul Wegener directed and played a leading role in the film set in 16th-century Prague. The Jewish ghetto is in danger and the emperor order the Jews to leave the city. Only the mythical Golem can help. It's one of the earliest films to address the persecution of Jews.
Image: picture alliance / United Archiv
Persecution of Jews in 1920s Vienna
Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer, "The City Without Jews," is an important example of how films have taken on anti-Semitism. The Austrian-made film is set in Vienna in the 1920s and shows how the residents held Jews responsible for all social ills. Critics, however, have lamented the film's use of anti-Semitic cilches.
Image: Filmarchiv Austria
Fine line between tolerance and clichés
Four years earlier in 1916, the American director DW Griffith had created the monumental historical film,"Intolerance." The story explains historical events over the course of four episodes, taking intolerance to task. Yet in a scene showing the crucifixion of Jesus, Griffith employed Jewish stereotypes. As a result, critics have also accused "Intolerance" of demonstrating anti-Semitic tendencies.
Image: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Picture Library
Ben Hur through the decades
"Ben Hur" was first made in 1925, but has been reinvented many time since then. It tells the story of a conflict betweet Jews and Christians at the beginning of the 1st century. Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur lives in Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a contemporary of Jesus Christ. The way the Jewish-Christian relationship is showed in the Ben Hur films remains a topic of discussion today.
Image: Imago/United Archives
A trial and pogrom in 1880s Hungary
Although hardly known today, GW Pabst's "The Trial" (1948) is an astounding early example of how the cinema reacted to the Holocaust. Filmed in Austria just three years after the end of the war, Pabst tells a true story set in 1882 in Hungary. A young girl disappears from her village and Jews are blamed. Tragically, a pogrom follows.
Image: Filmarchiv Austria
Broaching the truth
"The Trial" remained an exception. After the war, it took the film industry in Europe quite some time to deal with the subject. The French director Alain Resnais was the first to address the Nazi genocide in 1956, in the unsparing 30-minute documentary "Night and Fog."
Image: picture-alliance/Mary Evans Picture Library/Ronald Grant Archive
Bringing the Holocaust to TV
It wasn't until the 1978 television mini-series "Holocaust" was made that the genocide was brought to the broader public. The four-part US production directed by Marvin J. Chomsky tells the story of a Jewish family that gets caught in the cogs of the Nazis' genocidal policies.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List'
Fifteen years later, American director Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish on the big screen what "Holocaust" had done for television audiences. "Schindler's List" portrayed the brutal reality of the Nazis' anti-Semitism in Germany, but also in Eastern Europe, spotlighting the unscrupulous SS offcer Amon Göth.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives
Claude Lanzmann and 'Shoah'
French director Claude Lanzmann harshly criticized Spielberg's drama. "He did not really reflect on the Holocaust and cinema. The Holocaust cannot be portrayed," he said in an interview. Lanzmann himself took up the subjects of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in a completely different way - through long documentaries and essay films such as "Shoah" and "Sobibor."
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
Humor and the Holocaust
Italian comedian and filmmaker Roberto Bengini took a daring approach in his film on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In 1997, "Life is Beautiful" premiered, telling the fictional story of Jews suffering in a concentration camps. The humor he wove throughout had a liberating effect.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Roman Polanski's 'The Pianist'
An equally moving film by Polish-French director Roman Polanski was released in 2002. In "The Pianist," the fate of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman during the war years of 1943-44 was brought to the big screen. The project allowed the director, whose mother and other relatives were deported and murdered by the Nazis, to work through his own family's past.
Image: imago stock&people
Anti-Semitism and Jesus the Jew
Films about the life of Jesus Christ often come up in discussions about anti-Semitism in cinema. Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988), for example, has been accused of reinforcing anti-Semitic clichés, particularly in scenes in which Jews are indirectly associated with greed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Mel Gibson's scandalous 'The Passion of the Christ'
Much more controversial was the film that Australian Mel Gibson released two years later. Both Christians and Jews accused Gibson of explicit anti-Semitism in the film, saying he didn't counter the implications in the New Testament that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus (who himself was Jewish). In public, Gibson likewise used anti-Semitic speech.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Turkish anti-Semitism
Audiences and critics alike decried the anti-Semitism in the Turkish film, "Valley of the Wolves." The action-packed movie version of a TV series of the same name showed a battle between Turkish soldiers and Israel. The film employed "anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic stereotypes and was inciteful," according to several organizations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kugler
WWII still a challenge for filmmakers
Just how difficult it can still be to address the subject matter of World War II is evident in the response to a three-part German TV series from 2013, "Generation War." The series follows a handful of German soldiers fighting on the eastern front. It was criticized in Poland for anti-Semitism and was said to have represented the Polish resistance.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
Hannah Arendt and 'the banality of evil'
Margarethe von Trotta's film about Hannah Arendt was well received in 2012. The director sketched a balanced portrait of the philosopher and publicist who, in the 1960s, grappled with a figure who was largely responsible for the Nazi genocide: Adolf Eichmann. Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to explain anti-Semitism clothed in seemingly harmless bureaucracy.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Heimatfilm/NFP
The 'Wonder Woman' controversy
Because the protagonist of the current Hollywood super hero hit "Wonder Woman" is played by Israeli Gal Gadot, the film was not shown in a number of Arab countries. Gadot herself had served in the Israeli army and defended her experience. Not showing "Wonder Woman" is anti-Semitic, according to the public sentiment in Israel.
Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was born in 1928 in Transylvania, Romania. He was deported to Auschwitz along with his family when he was 15 years old. His mother and younger sister died in the camp and Wiesel was moved to Buchenwald with his father, who died shortly before Allied forces liberated the prisoners in 1945.
The Holocaust survivor lived in Paris after the end of World War II and studied to become a journalist, according to his biography on the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity website.
In the years that followed, Wiesel was motivated to write his book Night, about his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. It sold more than 10 million copies. Night was the first book of the Holocaust memorial trilogy, which included Dawn and Day. He also authored over 60 books, mostly in French. These included A Beggar in Jerusalem, The Testament, The Fifth Son and his memoirs.
Aside from his work as a writer, Wiesel also enjoyed a career as an academic, serving at Boston, Columbia and Yale universities. Wiesel was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his lifelong work on raising awareness about the Holocaust. He died in 2016.