Three prime-time television dramas on Holocaust themes won top honors at Sunday night’s Emmy Awards, proving once again the lasting impact of the Nazi horror in our popular culture.
“Anne Frank” was named best miniseries for its powerful, four-hour long exploration of the teen-age diarist’s life. The miniseries traced her happy school days, her two wartime years in hiding in Amsterdam during which she wrote her famous diary, and her final days at Bergen-Belsen.
“Conspiracy,” a dramatic re-enactment of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where Naxzi leaders drew up the blueprint for the Nazi extermination of European Jewry, won two awards: Actor Kenneth Branagh, who portrayed SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, and Loring Mandel, who wrote the script.
Brian Cox, in the role of Field Marshall Herman Goering, won supporting actor honors in the miniseries “Nuremberg,” a dramatization of the 1945-46 trial of top Nazi war criminals.
In other Jewish awards, Barbra Streisand earned her fourth career Emmy for “Barbra Streisand: Timeless”.
The Emmy Awards had been postponed twice following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Actress Ellen DeGeneres emceed the event and drew the evening’s biggest laugh when she observed, “I’m in a unique position as host because, think about it, what would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”
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