| Notes: Director: Ari Libsker; An Israeli documentary film that explores the rise and popularity of a uniquely Israeli genre of pulp known locally as “stalags”. Those soft cover pocketbooks basically repeated a similar plot, that of downed allied pilots that find themselves in a German POW camp that is run by sadistic, sex-crazed female guards that subjects them to all kind of torture and abuse, but most importantly also ones of sexual nature. Add to that a sensational, violent, and sexy artwork cover, that always included German fraulines in revealing Nazi uniform, and you get a product that appealed to many young men in the early 60’s. The artwork, incidentally, was always “borrowed” from American pulp magazines, without giving credit. All the writers were Israeli, and to lend their work added prestige they all used American pseudonyms, so they appeared as though they were translations. But the most important aspect of the Stalags phenomenon was the time of their appearance, which was 1961. That year the first stalag appeared in bookstores, and the much-anticipated Eichmann’s Trial opened. Was it just a coincidence, or is there a deeper connection between the two? The full title of this documentary is Stalags – Holocaust and Pornography in Israel, but back then both topics were either taboo of the first, and virtually non-existent of the second. By today’s reality it is hard to imagine that The Holocaust was simply not something that survivors discussed and talked with their family about. Eichmann’s trial just busted the subject wide open. As for pornography, society in Israel was very puritanical at the time, and those books were very mild, bordering on innocent, in fact. Answering the charge of how could Israeli readers consume such smut when discussing the holocaust, the director pointed out that with some very rare exceptions no Jewish characters are ever mention in Stalags, and reader simply saw those books as dealing with the Second World War rather than the holocaust. That fad however disappeared as suddenly as it came to be, when one publisher was taken to court for |
