Portrayals of Christians in Holocaust Movies: Priests in Dachau and Volker Schlöndorff's The Ninth Day

This article considers the motion picture The Ninth Day (2004, dir. Volker Schlöndorff), and the manner in which Father Jean Bernard's experience in Dachau has been portrayed in the film. It looks at the experience of one Christian (or rather, one group of Christians, the Catholic priests at Dachau) against the backdrop of a Nazi concentration camp that has become symbolic of the Nazi period and the Holocaust it spawned. By examining the singular experience of this Catholic priest in Dachau, we can begin to arrive at newer appreciations of how historical memory of a shared Christian and Jewish past can be understood by current and future generations.