| Description | Written to Lord Pakenham at 10, Linnell Drive, London, N.W.11
' When we met last Friday and discussed our eternal problem subject, the position in Germany, I also gave you a few examples of the recently growing anti-Semitism in Germany. Your reply was "What do you want; look at the Jews in Berlin who protested against the showing of the film 'Oliver Twist' ".
I have not seen this film, but now that I have got some information about it, I must say that I think that the protest was quite justified. There is, of course, no objection against showing such a film here, but to show it in Berlin, after all that has happened in Germany in the last fifteen years and where the minds of the people cannot yet have returned to anything nearing normlaity, I think is unwise, to say the least. I think it is just as unwise as, for instance, to show a film centering on the activities of the popes in the fifteenth century in a place where feeling between Catholics and Protestants runs high.
I do not know who was responsible for releasing this film in Germany. If it was the British administration, they certainly showed a regrettable lack of common sense; if it was a German official, he might possibley have done it out of downright mischievousness. ' |