Moll mulls gut-wrenching research behind ‘Last Days’

Jeff Howard

Friday, April 9, 1999 | 11:50 a.m.

It is perhaps the most delicate subject matter any filmmaker will ever have to tackle: The systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews, known as the Holocaust.

Steven Spielberg has tackled it twice: First, with his bleak, yet inspiring epic "Schindler's List," and now as producer of the documentary "The Last Days," which won Best Documentary at this year's Academy Awards and starts a return engagement in Las Vegas today at Regal Cinemas Village Square. The film deals with the waning days of World War II, when Adolf Hitler, knowing he was losing the war, launched a full-scale genocide against Hungarian Jews. This was called Hitler's Final Solution.

For the daunting task of properly documenting this horror, Spielberg turned to filmmaker James Moll. In a bold stroke, Moll uses no narrator -- the chilling tales are told entirely by five concentration camp survivors. "The Last Days" captures their fear, pain and, most importantly, their unshakable will to survive. Moll spoke to the Sun about the film:

Question: You premiered "The Last Days" at the Berlin Film Festival. What was the response?

Answer: It was really interesting to see it with a German audience. Their reaction was very strong emotions and very conflicted emotions. The press conference we had afterward went really long -- longer than the average press conference at the Berlin Film Festival. These people in the audience got into it with each other and it became very intense, in a good way.

Q: Can the German people ever live this down?

A: I think there were feelings of guilt. Again, there were conflicting feelings. Some people do associate with those people in World War II, and others disassociate. I think that is why the younger generation tends to be more open to seeing films like this and talking about the Holocaust. Who knows? I'm not an expert on German society. I didn't know what to expect. Overall, it was very favorable.

Q: Having spoken to countless Holocaust survivors over the years, have you, as a filmmaker, come any closer to understanding why it happened?

A: No. The more I learn about it, the less I understand it.

Q: You've listened to many first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors -- many of whom, as shown in the film, return to those very camps of misery, where they lose their composure and break emotionally, and finally bring some sort of closure to this terrible ordeal. How hard is it for you, personally and professionally, dealing with these raw emotions?

A: Not easy. It was an emotionally challenging experience to go back to the camps and back to the hometowns with the survivors. Of course, I was making a film, so I was able to escape behind my camera and think about angles and lenses, technical things. I think that it's fair to say that sometimes I escaped and the camera was, in a sense, a barrier. But, I'm not behind the camera all the time, and I had to be there with the survivors and to relive their experiences with them. We were in it together. Especially, after the interview process, where I asked a lot of personal questions. That's tough to do, but they were very open and willing to do it.

Q: The Shoah Foundation has documented more than 50,000 accounts from Holocaust survivors from around the world. "The Last Days" features the stories of five survivors. Why these five?

A: I wish there was an easy answer. Once we decided to do the Hungarian experience, I started to watch, with a small team of researchers, all the Hungarian testimony from the Shoah Foundation archive. I wanted to find people with different personalities and I figured that the audience could relate perhaps to one more than another. And, I wanted to find people who could talk about the range of events that took place during the Holocaust. I wanted to have them tell the complete story of what happened in Hungary during the Holocaust.

Q: Was it difficult to get these five people to open up about their experiences, or were they more than willing to share their painful memories with the world?

A: As with any interview, in the beginning it was slow, but you develop a trust and I made it clear to them that I wasn't going to portray them in a bad light. I gave them the opportunity to watch the film, if they wanted to make any changes. They didn't. Nobody wanted any changes.

Q: What story from the film stood out most in your mind?

A: It's all difficult to hear. A lot of it isn't even in the film, because we shot over 50 hours of footage and there were a lot of stories that I couldn't keep in because of time. One of the most difficult interviews was the Greek man who was forced to clear out the gas chambers and put the bodies in the crematorium. He was in a synagogue and it was the last sit-down interview I did for the film. That was the most difficult interview of my life. After his interview is when it really hit me and I had to struggle to maintain my composure.

All of the survivors' emotions were right up front, as if this happened just yesterday. They were telling me things that they have never told anyone before. When were walking through Auschwitz, with Allison, the woman who talks about saying her prayers in the latrine, she needed a few moments for herself and I went off to get another shot with the camera. I went towards the barbed wire and she shouted at me to get away from the wire. It made her uncomfortable for anyone to get near the wire. For the rest of the day we stayed away from the barbed wire, because she remembered it being electrified. The memory was so vivid in her mind, and I found that out with all of the survivors.

Q: Was "The Last Days" a project that Spielberg and yourself envisioned since "Schindler's List"?

A: When Steven was working on "Schindler's List," he met a lot of Holocaust survivors and they talked to him about their stories. He realized that we have to preserve these while we can, and he had this idea to videotape survivors all over the world. I was hired to put together a plan to see how we might undertake a huge, global video project. He gave us an opportunity to launch it in July of 1994. And by January of 1995, we were doing over 300 testimonies a week, in all different languages.

Q: At this year's Sundance Film Festival, among the entries was a documentary called "Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr." It's about a man who agrees to conduct an investigation at Auschwitz and concludes that no deadly gas was ever used there. How do you respond to so-called Holocaust deniers?

A: The Shoah Foundation is a good response. They have over 50,000 testimonies from people in different parts of the world, speaking different languages and they have never met. Many of them are describing the same event on the same day with tremendous accuracy and detail. It's hard to deny that the Holocaust ever happened.

Q: There was a confrontation between an Auschwitz survivor and one of the camp's Nazi doctors. She said after the scene, in voice-over, that she had lost all control after he kept evading her questions as to the nature of the death of her sister Klara, who was medically experimented on and who died there. What didn't we see or hear?

A: You didn't see her leave his house and see the emotional pain she suffered. I could only speculate, but it was difficult to even get him. Other former Nazis were not willing to come forward and talk about it. They wanted to be paid or other conditions (were) put upon us. Obviously, we're not going to pay for testimony. No one was paid in the film. He was willing to come forward and talk, which I think was important historically. As you will see in the film, he talks about things in a very detached manner. He talks about the things he witnessed and how the camp functioned, but he doesn't talk about what he himself participated in. When it came time for him to talk to Renee (Klara's sister), he was very evasive.

Q: Do you hope that "The Last Days" will become required viewing for school children everywhere?

A: I can only hope that it would be required and sought out by teachers, and the Shoah Foundation has already created a study guide. It promotes discussion about the Holocaust, and the film relates the Holocaust to their own lives. It would ask the students, "What would you pack?" or "What would take with you if you were going to a concentration camp?" They break the film into 15- to 30-minute segments so they can watch just a section each day and study the Holocaust all week. It will find its way into classrooms.

Q: Who do you think should see "The Last Days" and why?

A: Everybody. People like me who grew up Catholic who knew about the Holocaust, but had never related to the Holocaust in a very personal way. Because the Holocaust is so relevant in our lives and in the world today, it's important that everyone understand that the Holocaust is the worst-case scenario of what can happen if we allow hatred to get out of hand.

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