Supposedly a "renegade" outfit of mostly Jews has been organized to go behind German lines and kill and mutilate Nazis. Each soldier is given the duty to take 100 scalps. I don't mean kill. They are literally supposed to cut off the tops of their heads. The band also carves swastikas in foreheads. The reviewers say true to Tarantino's "style" when a head gets bashed in we'll get to see "pulp" and brain "spatter". Admittedly none of the film is true. The movie is a World War II "fantasy", a "comedy", our "wish fulfillment"
A long New York Times article about the producers of the film wonders at the film's sadism and remarks "the Allies beat, scalp and chiffonade the foreheads of so many German soldiers that at moments, against your will, you feel sorry for the Nazis." I had to look up "chiffonade". It's a cooking term. It means to cut into long thin strips.
For the viewer, exactly how is all this different than watching a snuff film? What pernicious effect with this "cinematically dazzling" gore-fest have on U.S. or Israeli soldiers sent to fight in Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran or who knows where else. After all they're always told they're fighting the troops of the "new Hitler" and only wimps would refuse to "take the gloves off" when fighting "Nazis" What an revolting insult the movie is to the Allied infantrymen who fought in World War II, who by and large never engaged in atrocities.
Trepper was a Jew, from Galicia, which when he was born was part of Austro-Hungary. His family was dirt poor and, he dropped out of school for working class jobs. He took part in a general strike in Cracow, Poland that was viciously suppressed. He was blacklisted and he left for Palestine in 1924. After a few months of Zionist enthusiasm he saw the class struggle at work, and joined the Communist Party of Palestine. The party wanted to organized Jews and Arabs together, but the British, Ben Gurion's Jewish police and the Palestinian Grand Mufti thought otherwise. After an arrest, a release after a hunger strike and constant harassment Trepper was deported. His closest comrades in Palestine would eventually become the core of the Red Orchestra.
After a stint in France, Trepper left for the Soviet Union. He was there during the height of the purges, and he describes how a party of militants degenerated into a collection fearful robots, he among them. Yet the danger of Nazism was always uppermost in his mind and he joined the Red Army Intelligence Service then under General Jan Berzin. He went to Belgium in 1938 to set up a network that would awaken in the event of war with Germany and later making France his headquarters.
To make a long story short Trepper was able to send to Moscow 1500 radio messages with an incredible store of information about troop deployments, industrial production, raw material availability, aircraft production, even the plans for the top secret T6-Tiger tank. In May of 1941 he gave the Soviet military attache in Vichy the proposed plan of attack of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union (this and other independent reports of German war preparation were ignored as forgeries by the all-knowing Stalin).
Within a few days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, German radio operators began intercepting coded messages that were being sent to Moscow. A special group was set up to hunt down the Soviet network which the Germans dubbed the "Red Orchestra". Gradually they met success, and thourgh arrests, and torture finally found the "Big Chief". Trepper was arrested by the Gestapo in November of 1942.
Incredibly he was able to outwit the Gestapo from within their dungeons. They never found out he was a Jew. They thought they could "turn" Trepper and make him work for them. Trepper convinced them to continue sending radio messages to the Soviet Union to make it appear that he had never been captured. He even went out numerous "outings" from prison with his guards to let supposed free agents know that all was well.
The Gestapo eventually trusted him so well that he was lightly guarded. One of his interrogators constantly complained of stomach pain and Trepper told him of a pharmacy he knew that had the "ideal remedy". On September 13, 1943 Trepper was allowed to go unescorted into the phramacy to by the medicine. Trepper walked out the back door and escaped, laying low for the rest of the war.
Is there any movie in this? I think there's blood and gore enough even for a Tarantino. Most of Trepper's comrades were captured, about a hundred were executed, often they were beheaded.
Not enough suspense and twists and turns? Well there's more to Trepper's story. After the liberation of France he took the first available plane back to Moscow. Within a few weeks he was in Lubianka prison. His "crime" was belonging to the "counter-revolutionary gang" of General Berzin. Berzin had been executed during the purges. Despite Trepper's years of amazing work for the Soviets his assocation with an enemy of the people was all that mattered. In 1947 he was given a sentence of 15 years. Not until Stalin died was his case reviewed honestly. He was exonerated and let out of prison in 1954.
If that's not enough for a movie there's still more. Trepper and his family returned to Poland in 1957 and he became the leader of the Cultural Association of Polish Jews. Ten years later Gomulka, the first secretary of the Polish Communisty Party made a speech at a union meetings saying, "The Jewish community is the Fifth Column." A wave the anti-Semitic outbursts swept the country. Jews starting leaving. In June 1971 Trepper was put under virtual house arrest. An international campaign was started on his behalf. Yet the conditions of his confinement did not improve. Two years later after a serious illness he wrote a letter to the Polish CP Central Committee saying he inteneded to go on a hunger strike. Either he would be allowed to leave Poland or he would starve himself to death! The CP caved. In November 1973 he was allowed to leave for England.
He died in Jerusalem in 1982. In the epilogue to his autobiography "The Great Game", he wrote that he did not regret his revolutionary commitment, "that socialism will triumph, and that it will not have the color of the Russian tanks that crushed Prague."
So there you have it, a proud tough Jew, a Red who made the made the Nazis pee in their pants.
I think there's a movie in there somewhere.
