A record 72 percent of the audience watched the first episode of the American NBC-TV series “Holocaust” on French television last night. According to the first available data, only 28 percent opted for the other two French channels. The general impression of the film was, However, “reserved” with viewers grading it 15 out of a maximum of 20 points.
The debate which was due to follow the first episode had to be cancelled at the last moment because of a TV technicians’ strike. But several privately owned radio stations and a number of newspapers organized debating panels of their own.
Radio Luxembourg, which organized the most important of these panels with the participation of Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld, reported an exceptionally larqe number of phone calls from listeners. Many of the callers expressed shock and surprise, asking “Why didn’t the Jews flee Germany while they still had a chance?” Others asked. “Why was there no revolt?”
Many of the callers also wanted to know why the film dealt almost exclusively with the fate of the Jewish victims and failed to mention that of millions of other people. The French news agency Agenc France Presse reported in its domestic service that a large number of people reacted antagonistically to the film, saying “It is the start of a political campaign against West European unification.” France and West Germany are at the care of the European Economic Community which is holding elections this summer for the first European Parliament.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which conducted a mini-poll of its own, found that the majority of people who saw it, and mainly the non-Jews, were “deeply moved .” One young non-Jewish woman said she had to stop watching the film at a certain point “because I am pregnant” and feared a possible miscarriage. A man, also a non-Jew, who had lived through the Nazi occupation of France, said “At last we now know what really happened during those days.”
Dozens of people telephoned French police, to denounce “former Nazis” reportedly in hiding and dozens more contacted the various newspapers and radio stations with similar reports. The overall impression was that in spite of its technical and historical imperfections, pointed out by many of the television viewers,” Holocaust “served its main purpose to bring the past into the present and remind the nation of one of history’s most tragic chapters.
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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.
