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Although film professor Dr. Eric Goldman expected the genre of Holocaust films to die out, last year's resurgence forced him to take a different look at how Holocaust films have progressed over time.

He shared his observations Jan. 24 at the annual Edith & Mark Lief Lecture & Breakfast at Temple Beth O'r/Beth Torah, Clark.

"I think we are now reaching a very interesting point in terms of how we, as Jews, are very much tied to these portrayals (in Holocaust movies)," Goldman told the crowd at the lecture. "The Holocaust, as controversial as it's becoming, is something that we unfortunately own, and we are very much connected to, and it still remains a piece of cinema, and the question of the future is how that will play out as we ourselves feel more a part of American society."

Goldman began his lecture with the 1940 Charlie Chaplin film called "The Great Dictator," in which a Jewish World War I veteran returns to his shtetl to find that Jews are persecuted, and in what Goldman called a "dark comedy," he trades places with his look-alike, the dictator of the fictitious Tomania -- the only parallel to Hitler's actions in Europe reflected in movies during that time period. "The Great Dictator" contributed to Chaplin's political downfall in America, but commercially, the film was Chaplin's most successful.

"Chaplin, a non-Jew, had the courage to make this film while the Jewish Hollywood community retreated out of total fear," Goldman said. "If you look at film history during this period, [non-Jewish filmmakers] went on to make films about anti-Semitism, where the Jewish moviemakers were really much more conservative and fearful."

Goldman said that no films appeared in America about the Holocaust until 1958, but that the issue was still addressed from a solely American, liberators' perspective. Before that, the discovery and publication of Anne Frank's diary spurred some dialogue, but the subject was considered "too Jewish" for Hollywood.

"Mayer Levin, the Jewish author who championed the cause of Frank and who helped get its publication, gave it a strong Jewish flavor in the initial radio play that was put over the airwaves and it was pushed out," Goldman said. "Why? Too Jewish. Nobody's interested. The Holocaust was too Jewish, and nobody here wants to know about it."

Financially, Goldman said, Hollywood had a point; a Holocaust film would not make money the way other movies would have. However, Goldman said, the dominantly Jewish Hollywood was scared to be perceived as "too Jewish," and therefore avoided the subject altogether.

"The diary went on to become a very important piece of literature, largely because it was deemed far more universal, but again, Hollywood's Jewish moviemakers wanted to avoid anything that was considered to be too Jewish, largely because they did not want to be seen as too Jewish," Goldman said. "That's extremely important, not just for understanding Jews in Hollywood, but understanding the history of Jews in America."

During this time, "The Young Lions," adapted from Irwin Shaw's novel, was adapted for the silver screen. The movie features a Jewish private in the U.S. Army who is part of the liberation of the camps. The dialogue related to the Jewish American's relationship with the Holocaust is brief and limited; the film focuses on the heroic acts of the U.S. during the end of World War II.

"Jews were not yet ready to talk about that connection," Goldman said. "It was something that took place over there. We were the liberators, we did the right thing, we provided for the survivors, but that's it. That connection to the Shoah was totally separated between the European and the American."

The first film in America to deal with the experience of a survivor in America was "The Pawnbroker," made by Sidney Lumet in 1964. Goldman showed a clip where the main character has a flashback to the cattle cars while traveling on a subway, noting that this was the first American movie in which survivors appeared, or were a main focus, for a lengthy period of time.

"What he does here is he brings in, for the very first time, [the concept] that we are survivors," Goldman said.

Although America, Western Europe, and Israel took decades to come around to making Holocaust films, Goldman said that it took maybe six months for Polish and Czechoslovakian filmmakers to begin making documentaries about what they saw during the Holocaust. While American Jews did not want to appear "too Jewish," Israel saw the Holocaust as the "old Jew" while Israel was based on the robust and powerful "new Jew," and Western Europe remained in denial until a French filmmaker made a movie called "Sorrow in the Pity," which accused France of willingly sending its Jews to concentration camps.

"The film is banned in France, but no sooner is it made that three different filmmakers make films about the Shoah immediately after, and suddenly, it's open discussion about the war years," Goldman said. "The film was brought back to France and placed on French television."

This discussion prompted the production of Holocaust movies in Italy, starting with "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" in 1971 and "Life is Beautiful" in 1998. Over the 27 year period, Goldman explained, Holocaust films in Italy went from the Italians standing helplessly by to the Italians actively standing up alongside Italian Jews.

"That's the change that you start to see in European cinema," Goldman said. "Western Europeans stayed away from the embarrassment which they called the Holocaust, but Eastern Europeans dealt with it (immediately and) strongly; they were the most affected."

Despite several keynote films Goldman discussed that were made in America, he said that Holocaust cinema did not become an acceptable topic until 1978, with the TV miniseries with Meryl Streep and James Woods called "Holocaust." Although Elie Wiesel came out strongly against the miniseries, saying that no program or film could accurately portray the Holocaust, Goldman said that the miniseries helped to bring about the Holocaust dialogue in America.

"The producers were put on the defensive -- how dare they deal with the Holocaust on television?" Goldman said. "But time told the story. Holocaust education became an important part of American public education, mandated in over 15 states, and the miniseries was taken to Germany, where first the first time, Germans were talking about what happened during the war," starting a chain of films in Germany for the first time. "The Germans are struggling, the Dutch are struggling, and the British are struggling with the issue of the Holocaust all of a sudden, largely because 'Holocaust' was put on television worldwide."

The last three movies Goldman discussed were three American films: Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," made in 1993; "Defiance," made in 2009; and "Inglorious Basterds," also made in 2009. In "Schindler's List," Goldman said, the non-Jew is the one who saves the Jews, making the movie easier to swallow for the American public. However, in 2009, "Defiance" and "Inglourious Basterds" are Jews defending themselves against their oppressors.

"What has happened since ['Schindler's List']?" Goldman asked. "Lots of films, lots of documentaries, and now the Holocaust is now part of American and world history. What about the films that have come forward since then? What are they saying? Not only are they Jews who are protecting and saving Jews, but they are the new Jews; even though it's set during the war, they are the Jews who fight."

Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" went one step further, Goldman said, in portraying the girl in the red dress, the only object in "Schindler's List" filmed in color. Tarantino took the girl, unaware of her surroundings in "Schindler's List," turned her into a French woman named Shoshana who flees from France in order to fight against the Nazis. After applying her makeup, Shoshana packs a pistol in her fashionable purse and prepares to leave.

"If you look at this movie and contrast it with 'Schindler's List,' it's very eye opening, particularly the periodic positioning of a young girl in a red dress, impervious and protected from what's going on," Goldman explained. "We not only have Jews defending themselves or taking offensive action as we saw in 'Defiance'; we also have a woman coming to the forefront, girding herself for battle in her own way."