Murderers Among Us: Anti-Fascism Films of DEFA Studios (Deluxe Limited Edition)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there, wrote English novelist L.P. Hartley in 1953. And yet, perhaps not so differently. Fascism and right-wing ideologies are on the rise worldwide these days, including here in America. Its a good time to look at a remarkable group of films made by East Germanys DEFA Studios in the post-WWII period which addressed the rise and rot of fascism in Germany since 1933 even more remarkable given that they were made under strict Soviet and GDR control. All of filmmakers and actors had been directly or indirectly impacted by the war: director Falk Harnack (THE AXE OF WANDSBEK) had fought with the White Rose resistance group and lost his brother to the Nazis, while author Bruno Apitz (NAKED AMONG WOLVES) and WANDSBEKs lead actor Erwin Geschonneck had survived the Nazi concentration camps. Other film artists had worked at the UFA studio under Nazi authorities, even prod