The CBS-TV has be accused of “utter callous disregard of the thousands of survivors” of the Holocaust for selecting actress Vanessa Redgrave to play an Auschwitz survivor in a film based on Fania Fenelon’s “Playing For Time.”
In a sharply worded telegram to Fred Roppoport and William Paley, director and chairman of the Board of CBS, respectively, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles and member of the Advisory Committee to President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, declared: “Your selection shows utter callous disregard of the tens of thousands of survivors for whom Miss Redgrave’s portrayal would desecrate the memory of the martyred millions.
“Your decision,” the telegram continued, “could only be compared to selecting J. Edgar Hoover to portray Martin Luther King Jr. The very thought of the prospect of Miss Redgrave using the money she earns from this film to further degradate the State of Israel, a nation born out of the ashes of Auschwitz is an insult that survivors and the entire North American, Jewish community will not accept.” Miss Redgrave has been under attack for espousing the cause of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
