SIFF Pick of the Day: Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel

In the relatively innocent early ’60s, West 42nd Street was a carnival of pinball parlors, freak shows, and, mainly, movie theaters. Some offered western triple bills for 40 cents. Others--smaller, shabbier, and forbidden to kids--featured Olga’s House of Shame. What my 13-year-old mind could not then grasp was why, along with amateur documentaries of “nudist-camp volleyball,” these theaters also showed atrocity footage of Nazi concentration camps--was it because there were naked women there, too? That pornographic juxtaposition of horniness and horror is the subject of Ari Libsker’s Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel. Named for the German prison camps in which they were set, the “stalags” were soft-core S&M porn in which downed U.S. or British pilots were abused by lustful, bodacious “female SS brutes,” ultimately repaying their tormentors in kind. Far too short at 60 minutes, Stalags raises many more questions than it can possibly answer, and the whole issue of Holocaust porn deserves fuller treatment. The abrupt, inconclusive ending has the effect of throwing the problems inherent in teaching, dramatizing, or even representing the Holocaust back at the viewer. The least that can be said is that these issues are raised. However artless its presentation, Stalags presents material that’s difficult to shake off and impossible to dismiss. SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer St. (McCaw Hall), 324-9996, www.siff.net. $9-$11. 4:30 p.m. (Also: 9 p.m. Sun. June 8.) J. HOBERMAN