"Plan A" actor August Diehl: "So many crimes were not avenged"

August Diehl plays a concentration camp survivor in the new movie “Plan A”. In the interview he talks about the desire for revenge, the pain of others as a responsibility and what it means to take on such a role as a non-Jewish German

Mr. Diehl, when did you first hear about a group of Shoah survivors preparing a plan of revenge against the German population?

I didn’t know about it before this film. I didn’t know that Plan A existed either. It is actually logical that there must have been such a thing. All the perpetrators were still there. The group that called itself “Nakam”, after the Hebrew word for vengeance, wanted to prevent the perpetrators from taking the rat line to Argentina, which then happened. This film is about revenge, but also about the tension between the past and the future. There were those among the Jewish survivors who said that we cannot let these crimes rest, that there has to be some kind of compensation. But the others said that if we take revenge there will be no tomorrow for us and no Israel. Plan A was likely boycotted by Jewish fighters from the Haganah underground organization. They knew that the world public would likely have blocked the establishment of the State of Israel after Plan A had been implemented. Revenge is a complex issue. So many crimes of that time have not been avenged.

In case law, revenge may be considered a “base motive”.

It is also “a low motivation”. And in moments so understandable. No matter how terrible the idea of Plan A was because so many civilians would have died – it is understandable nonetheless. I have often talked to the two directors Yoav and Doron Paz about it, also about the life of the members of this group, later in Israel. You told me a lot about the intergenerational conflicts in Israel. The younger generation also often had aversions to the first generation; they did not want to hear the stories from the war or the post-war period.

What is your relationship with Israel?

I was first really approached by the country in November 1995, when the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was assassinated. I was sitting in a café in Berlin and saw people crying. At that time the connection between Israel and Germany was closer. I think American politics has damaged the relationship in recent years. I traveled to Israel late, a few years ago in connection with an invitation to a film. I was very impressed by the liveliness and openness. Everyone seeks conversation there. I wish that I can build a longer and bigger connection to this country, maybe also through this film. I now have friends there, that’s nice, and I really enjoyed working with my Israeli colleagues. They were the ones who brought the sun to this sinister subject, who were loud, who laughed and were silly. The Germans in the team and cast were somehow more burdened by it.

“By the way, there was a plan B and it was carried out. The bread was poisoned with arsenic in a collective camp of prisoners of the SS. “

You played roles that were located in the time of National Socialism with a remarkable number of times. Victim and perpetrator. An accident?

Much of it is certainly coincidental because I am offered these projects. I canceled some of these too. But the fact is that the topic has always been on my mind unconsciously. And it’s not a story from distant Babylon, it’s very close. The extent of these crimes cannot be understood, cannot be grasped. You can grasp parts of it, you can read it up in history books, but anyone looking for an explanation will always fail. The idea of “Plan A” also includes the attempt to find some kind of explanation, of compensation, through revenge.

The character you play is once asked by one of the Haganah fighters: “Why didn’t you fight?” Paradoxically, the man you play feels guilty because he survived.

It is precisely because of the feeling of shame and guilt that revenge appears as a kind of catharsis. As internal cleansing. By the way, there was a plan B and it was carried out. The bread was poisoned with arsenic in a collective camp of prisoners of the SS. There were probably deaths, some fell ill, but it didn’t work as planned because the arsenic had been stretched – probably another boycott by the Haganah, who didn’t want things to get too big. I think it’s good that the film answers the question of the legitimacy of revenge in a cinematic way, but I don’t want to anticipate the end.

What do you know about the character you are playing? Was there this spy who worked with the vengeance group and yet betrayed their plan?

He’s a shadow figure, he probably existed, but you don’t know exactly who he was. I imagined that he could have been a German Jew who only came to terms with the fact that he was Jewish through the racial madness of the Nazis. Many German Jews had this fate. He is an Auschwitz survivor. Someone who belonged to the “Canada group” were the inmates who received the newcomers and sorted their belongings. In this way, they were drawn into the machinery of murder by the SS in a perfidious manner. Hence his shame, his guilt.

You play the pain of this character really harrowing. How do you put yourself in the shoes of someone who has experienced something like this, who continues to exist as if extinguished?

It’s a huge responsibility. How do you play a destroyed person? It is good to hear that you perceived it that way. I read a lot during the preparation. I also reread Primo Levi’s essay “Is that a person?”. Mere witness reports helped me almost more. Writers formulate, but if something has not been formulated and has not yet been designed, I can almost better empathize with the immediate human feeling. I watched a lot of interviews, as I did with previous films. In contrast to “Die Fälscher”, when I was able to have long conversations with a contemporary witness who was still alive, this was no longer possible this time.

Twenty years ago you played a major role alongside Anouk Aimée in the film “Birkenau and Rosenfeld”, which was shot on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau. What do you remember?

The director Marceline Loridan Ivens was the only female director to get permission to film there because she was a 13-year-old Jewish girl who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. This film was about memory. She wanted to know if her memories are correct or if they are fooling her.

Someone, I think it was the author and survivor Ruth Klüger, once said that there is nothing to be found out about this place.

That’s right, you can see the frogs in the grass by the ponds into which the ashes of the murdered were poured. Butterflies fly over the huge field where the barracks were. I also remember that the director crossed out the word Muzeum on a sign that said “Muzeum Auschwitz” and wrote “Camp” over it. I was in Oswiecim, as the small town near the camp is called today, for almost two months. During this time I was often in the memorial library and read reports from contemporary witnesses. Also the reports from perpetrators. I think that our world as it is today, with this central conflict in the Middle East, is a result of this catastrophe. Later, when I was in Jerusalem and saw each of the three great religions claiming this place for themselves, I thought this problem was insoluble. In other words – it is our job to resolve this conflict.

Did you feel like you had to position yourself?

In Graham Greene’s novel “The Quiet American” there is a passage in which a secretary to the main character, the journalist Fowler, says, “At some point, Mister Fowler, you have to take sides if you want to remain human.” Maybe that’s true. Maybe it is important, even if it is difficult. It is also a luxury position not to take sides. At the moment when you are in the middle of it, you have to. There is this wonderful novel by Joseph Roth, “Right and Left”. It takes place between the two world wars, when the Nazis come up. The main character is someone who prefers to listen to the gramophone, celebrate parties and does not want to position himself politically – and he gets under the wheels. The character has something of Herman Melville’s “The Writer Bartleby”, who at some point dies from his sentence “I’d rather not”.

Let’s come back to the film “Plan A” and your role in it. Many years ago, when Barbara Sukowa portrayed Rosa Luxemburg, there were voices that denied her being able to play this role because she is not Jewish. Now, as a non-Jewish German, you play a Jewish Shoa survivor. Have you already encountered the question “Can he?”?

I think that is yet to come. It was certainly not easy for the Israeli directors to decide either. On this subject, I think of an evening at the Deutsches Theater, where the actor Ernst Stötzner was asked during the audience discussion after the premiere why he was playing a Turkish taxi driver, he wasn’t a Turk at all. Stötzner said: “Yes, that’s right. And I’ll tell you something, I’m not a taxi driver either. ”That said, I think everything about the acting profession is said. As for Plan A, I think that playing that role created a different tension. If you build this bridge in my character, the complexity in relation to the German Jews becomes clear. It wasn’t two countries that went to war against each other, but there was a group consisting of Germans who were suddenly persecuted as Jews.

Have you studied the causes of anti-Semitism?

That worries me a lot. Anti-Semitism always seems to me like an atavism from a bygone era, something that we should have overcome long ago in a global world. But it is still there, intensifying all over Europe. It is shocking how quickly anti-Semitic remarks have become socially acceptable again. I believe fear is one of the main motivations. We are in a time when many are afraid. And that fear is used by certain parties. One can instrumentalize fear so well. You create enemies to distract from other problems. This pattern can be used to explain a great deal that cannot be explained. These people then talk about alleged bans on thinking, but there is no such thing in Germany. It’s about memory. Sometimes you have to point out what happened just the day before yesterday.

Interview: Christina Bylow