In the 1920s Germany produced a series of so-called mountain films, with Alpine settings and lots of climbing. Some of them were documentary, but many were fictional. Leni Riefenstahl began her film career by starring in some of them, which is logical enough for this eventual favorite of Hitler’s, since the mountain films celebrated German heroism and ingenuity and fed into the essence of Nazi bravado.

Now comes North Face , another German film about mountaineering. In May 1936, the country is looking for national heroes as the Olympics approach. Alpine success seems a good way to find some, especially through the ascent, if possible, of the north face of the Eiger in the Alps, which had already claimed some German lives. A secretary on a Berlin newspaper, Luise Fellner, knows two young men back in the town she came from who are possible candidates for glory. Her paper sends her down there; her boss accompanies her; the two young men finally agree to attempt the climb, as do two Austrians. These matters give Luise a chance to develop her skill in photography. A predictable story develops in the days of preparation and, later, during the attempts. The film’s real interest and excitement, naturally enough in two senses, are in the climbing.

I have always loathed mountain climbing. Like auto racing, it seems a sport designed for a viewer who basically wants to see death, and like racing, though through much more difficult stratagems, it finds occasional means to satisfy that viewer. Still, when the camera ascends, the heart almost fibrillates. All the predictable climbing shots in this picture, all the hammering-in of pitons, all the swinging on ropes precariously fastened while the men arch over infinity–it is all simultaneously hateful, silly, unnecessary, and chilling. The screenplay, by Benedikt Roeskau, is based on a true story, all of it familiar enough except the last Alpine scene, which stings.

Yet the hazardous north-facing is less astonishing than the existence of the film itself. Made recently, it is set in Hitler’s world. Nazi armbands are worn, Hitler is heil ed when people arrive and leave, conversation refers to the pleasant state of the country. North Face won several awards lately from the German Film Academy. Don’t these facts mark some sort of turning point in acceptance?

Not long ago we had My Führer , a German film that made Hitler a buffoon. Presumably it demonstrated that a god had been de-deified. But now a German film presents life under Hitler as calmly as life under Merkel. I am not suggesting that this picture signals the return of fascism in Germany. Rather, it suggests an increase in speed. Everything is faster these days, apparently including the melding of the present into the past, the acceptance of the past as history rather than experience. As I recall, it took about a century before the English theater could accept Napoleon as a romantic figure. Now it needs only sixty years for Germans to accept loyal Nazis simply as people of the past living in accepted ways.

The film-makers have put in one unguent shot at the end. Luise (gently played by Johanna Wokalek) is a postwar photographer in New York and is taking a photograph of a black musician. No permanent Nazi, she.

A big-budget German movie about the Nazis’ most successful propaganda picture and the pact with the devil sealed by its lead actor premiered to boos Thursday at the Berlin Film Festival.

“Jew Suss – Rise and Fall” by Oskar Roehler tells the true story of a little-known actor who is offered the lead role in the biggest anti-Semitic smear film commissioned by Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (Moritz Bleibtreu).

The new picture had been one of the most eagerly awaited at this year’s Berlinale but it drew scornful howls as the credits rolled at a press preview.

Roehler, whose last Berlinale competition film “The Elementary Particles” won the Silver Bear prize for best actor for Bleibtreu in 2006, defended his picture for liberties it takes with history.

“We were seeking historical precision,” he told reporters.

“But there were a few things open to interpretation. We wanted to show a human drama but we wanted to ratchet certain things up a bit to make his moral conflicts clearer. We make movies and not documentaries, also because we want to depict human feelings.”

The 1940 film was based on the story of Joseph Oppenheimer, known as Jud Suss, who was a financial advisor to the Duke of Wuerttemberg in the 18th century. He introduced exorbitant taxes and tolls and was finally hanged in 1738 for high treason.

Under the Third Reich, the story was retold as a parable about the alleged Jewish threat in 1930s Europe using grotesque anti-Semitic stereotypes. It became a runaway success in Fascist Europe, seen by some 20 million people.

“Jew Suss” delighted audiences at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival founded by Mussolini and was later shown to concentration camp guards and German soldiers on the front, who shouted its anti-Jewish slogans along with the actors on screen.

The lead actor, Ferdinand Marian, played in the current film by Tobias Moretti, agrees to perform the role for the Nazis although he is married to a Jewish woman, portrayed by Martina Gedeck, best known to international audiences from the Oscar-winning Stasi drama “The Lives of Others”.

His wife Anna is sickened by his choice and Marian himself fears being typecast as a Jew, but Goebbels makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

Marian’s Jewish wife is an invention of the film-makers — a device that drew some sharp criticism from reporters as a cheap dramatic ploy.

Audiences also jeered a scene in which Marian seduces the wife of an SS officer and she lustfully shouts “Jew” as they make love.

Bleibtreu, one of Germany’s most popular actors, defended the picture against hostile questions from reporters.

“When you make a movie you take certain liberties. Having Hitler and Goebbels die in a fire in a cinema in Paris — that’s not taking liberties with history?” he asked, referring to the spectacular finale of last year’s “Inglourious Basterds” by Quentin Tarantino.

The Berlinale film depicts how the actor’s choice destroys his life, setting off a chain reaction that sees his wife and a close Jewish friend deported to the concentration camps.

In real life, Marian was effectively banned from acting after the war and “Jew Suss” director Veit Harlan was tried but ultimately acquitted. Screenings in Germany of the film have been severely restricted by law since the war.

“Jew Suss – Rise and Fall” is one of 20 pictures vying for the 60th Berlinale’s Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded by a jury chaired by German director Werner Herzog on Saturday.

The diary of the notorious Josef Mengele is set to be auctioned off in the United States.

Nazi memorabilia collectors vying for the artifact belonging to the Nazi doctor known at Auschwitz as the “Angel of Death” are expected to pay about $64,000, according to the Daily Mail.

The owner of the diary acquired the volume in Brazil after Mengele died there in 1979, the newspaper said. The historical artifacts house Alexander Autographs in Connecticut told the newspaper that the owner is a source close to the Mengele family.

The diary begins in May 1960, when Mengele was 49.

At Auschwitz, Mengele determined who would live and die, and he conducted horrific, quasi-medical experiments, including on twins.

News of the auction has prompted anger and revulsion among Holocaust survivors and their families, according to a statement released Monday by The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

“This is a cynical act of exploitation aimed at profiting from the writings of one of the most heinous Nazi criminals,” the statement said. “If the auction house will not halt the sale, we are calling on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to determine if he has the means to do so.”

An exhibition marking Holocaust Memorial Day in a public park in Oxford has been vandalised.

Oxford artist Nicholas Hedges set up hundreds of 2ft-high metal stands at Shotover Park as part of a display.

Each was marked with a label containing extracts from a diary written by a Polish mayor during the early 1940s.

Mr Hedges said many of the stands have been removed. “It’s something you’ve got to, unfortunately, expect to happen,” he added.

The exhibition, called “The Woods, Breathing”, is due to continue along the yellow trail of the park until 8 February.

“There are enough stands left to hopefully remain there for at least the duration of the exhibition,” Mr Hedges said.

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

At 1100 GMT, Oxford city and Oxfordshire county councillors gathered to reflect on the Holocaust at Oxford Town Hall, before watching a short film about the atrocities.

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

This venue is well outside the downtown core, but its two exhibits, “More Than Just Games: Canada & the 1936 Olympics” and “Framing Bodies: Sport & Spectacle in Nazi Germany,” are worth a special trip. In them, the unfortunate arc of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, both held in Germany in 1936, is traced with painful clarity, from the moment in 1931 when the games were awarded to the Weimar Republic (”signaling Germany’s return to the international community after its defeat in the First World War”) to the events themselves.

Among the individual voices brought to life here are Toronto Daily Star reporter Matthew H. Halton who saw disaster brewing in 1933 (”My guess is … that Hitler has come to stay until he is displaced by assassination, civil war or a disastrous foreign war”) and Gypsy boxer Johann Trollmann who, when officials deprived him of a victory in the ring, came to his next match as a parody of an Aryan: hair dyed blond, skin powdered white.

Ambiguities and moral dilemmas riddled the 1936 Olympics. Was it better to boycott the games to protest the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler’s regime? Or, if you were Jewish or African-American, might a sports victory help discredit Nazi racist theories?

Other confusions: The similarity of the Olympic salute to the Nazi salute was problematic for visiting teams.

Informative, incisive and rich with archival photographs and documentation, “More Than Just Games” and its companion show about the Nazi era’s sports ethos offer a superb account of a nightmare phase in Olympics history. 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday, located on the lower level of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, 950 W. 41st Ave.; $5 suggested donation (604-264-0499 or www.vhec.org).