An Interview with Liliane Targownik

Directed and scripted by Liliane Targownik, Rosenzweig’s Freedom (Germany: Südwestfunk, 1998) is a critically acclaimed German film concerning the wave of neo-Nazi attacks on foreign guest workers and asylum seekers in the years immediately following German reunification. It was broadcast on ARD, Germany’s largest television network, in 1999. It won the Discovery Award from the Hollywood Film Festival Award and the German Unions’ (DAG) Gold Prize for the best television movie

Amidst a backdrop of news footage from real incidents in that turbulent period, Targownik tells the story of two sons of Holocaust survivors living in Germany. Michael Rosenzweig, a laborer engaged to a Vietnamese woman, randomly fires shots at a rampaging mob of skinheads when they attack and set fire to the refugee shelter where his fiancée lives. That night a prominent neo-Nazi leader is assassinated in the same neighborhood. The bullets in his body are traced to Michael’s gun. Michael’s brother Jacob reluctantly becomes his brother’s lawyer when he suspects that the court-appointed public defender Ahrendt has the wrong strategy. Jacob tracks down a homeless man who witnessed a skinhead pick up Michael’s gun after he tossed it away. Although Michael is cleared of homicide and marries, skinheads burn down his parents’ apartment.

Targownik admittedly “looks at German events from a Jewish perspective.” While she plans to return to Germany to make other films, she resides in Israel, where she completed her Masters degree in Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Rosenzweig’s Freedom is distributed in the United States by the National Center for Jewish Film, ncjf@brandeis.edu.

LB:

You were raised in Germany. When you were growing up, what films about Jewish life or the Holocaust had an impact on you?

LT:

I do not remember having seen a film about Jewish life or the Holocaust made by a German filmmaker when I was young. I think the first one I ever saw was The Sound of Music. I was about six years old and remember a nice and happy film that suddenly switched to the scene when the family has to flee across the mountains to evade being captured by the Nazis. It was very scary. The first film about Jewish life that I saw was Hester Street by Joan Micklin-Silver. I remember seeing it in Munich with my family and other people from the Jewish community. Everybody was very moved and proud that there was a film about “us.” There were only 5,000 Jews in Munich out of a total population of 1.5 million. Everyone knew each other. I was confronted with the issue of the Holocaust through books rather than films. My parents gave me The Diary of Anne Frank and the books of Leon Uris. I saw the movie versions of The Diary and Exodus after I had read the books. I saw a stage production of Fiddler on the Roof before I watched the film.

LB:

I noticed that one of your first films was about Aktionsühnenzeichen, a group of young Germans who undertake various projects to help the victims of Nazi Germany. What attracted you to this topic?

LT:

This documentary was my first work for Israeli TV. I did not speak Hebrew yet, but the head of the program Mabat Sheni, Michael Karpin, wanted me to do a film on this topic. I filmed young Germans working in Israel, trying to cope with the German past by helping Jews and Arabs there.

LB:

You are now studying in Israel. Have you made Aliyah or do you plan to return to Germany to make films about Jewish subjects?

LT:

I made Aliyah years ago. I make films both in Germany and Israel. This is a small world, you know. Of course, Rosenzweig’s Freedom was shot and produced in Germany. I am now planning a feature film called H.O.M.E. that will be set in Jerusalem in 2000. It will be done in English. I am also planning a documentary in Israel. The next script I will...