When the treatment of the Auschwitz theme in Hollywood under the title Holocaust89 appeared as a TV series in America and then worldwide, even in Germany, it was discussed everywhere as being for the education of mankind and accepted according to the sales principle of mass success, and praised even in schools, though both the structure and the intention of this aesthetics of sales were quite different from those serving truth. It was explained that it should be widely known and excused as the price of a soap-opera that serves the purpose of reaching many people in order to acquaint them, capitalizing on their emotions, with a phenomenon that they would otherwise shun and not take any notice of. Apart from the questionability of the success on this the lowest level of entertainment, for it quite predictably emerged that, at best, the viewers reached and affected by great media campaigns, already after some time continued to live and think as before, and, it is believed, rather worse and in rather a more disgruntled manner, since it was conducted in an important emotional corner, below the level of the depth of the heart, and used in advertising campaigns where something else is required. Apart, therefore, from these failed and self-defeating strategies, the cheap and comfortable is appealed to here, with the intention of exploiting feelings, where grief and compassion are necessary, which art honestly cannot and should not reach out to in this cheap and comfortable way. In addition, once so many men were reached and captured in their feelings, one wished to sell them things as usual. That means that at the holiest point stood the purpose with the motto: “Always, where the holiest is reached, the businessman is not far away.”
America and Europe, especially Germany, worked together. In an unprecedented way, without protest and responsibility, this America from Hollywood became the model of every individual effort in these and other matters. That however is a loss of victory, of a victory which one meant in 1945 when one spoke of liberation, liberation from coercion and seduction towards a freedom of quite another sort. One could also say it was a victory of baseness, lurking, as it were, for a long time, if the fear and the sorrow of the loss were not more important. Here the grandchildren, the grieving, sold the ashes of the victims. One of the greatest ordeals of mankind was buried in the amusement dump of cheap feelings, quickly and superficially, competing with the ratings or viewing figures for selling something else. That is only one thing, and like a bone-yard of culture, a waste. The other thing is the compliance with which Germany, as the central country of Europe, allowed itself to assume its part of the guilt via false applause for a mourning that does not relieve but confirms its own impotence. It points to the task of all artistic tradition that does not curry favor, if it is to be really effective and desire something apart from the self-celebration of false enrichment. Already one heard the scornful laughter that it was a sign of freedom that one could be just the same as the others, and that was also part of it. To be just like the recently defeated enemies was suddenly a goal of normalcy. Auschwitz, a soap-opera from Hollywood, for the better sale of our world. Hitler became a revenant90 among his enemies.