The Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival, Bureau of Jewish Education, and Phoenix Holocaust Association are partnering to bring this riveting film to the Phoenix area.
FILM SCREENING OF
The Devil’s Confession:
The Lost Eichmann Tapes
Sunday, November 12
11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Shea Harkins, 7354 E Shea Blvd, Scottsdale
General Admission: $18
Students/ Under 25: $10
Holocaust Survivors + Guest: FREE
Help us underwrite this remarkable film by becoming a Sponsor.
By donating $250 or more you will receive two free tickets and name recognition on the theatre screen.
Sunday, November 12, 2023 was chosen meaningfully chosen as it coincides with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, “Night of the Broken Glass,” the pogrom against the Jews which took place on November 9, 1938 that marked a grave turning point in the Holocaust.
ABOUT THE FILM
“The Devil’s Confession,” is an Israeli documentary by director Yariv Mozer and producer Kobi Sitt.
Adolf Eichmann, high ranking Nazi official who is widely considered a chief architect of the Holocaust, while living incognito in Argentina in the 1950’s, curiously submitted to 70 hours of taped interviews conducted by Willem Sassen, a Dutch journalist and former SS Nazi officer. The tapes, as the film explains, fell into various private hands and eventually wound up in a German government archive. In 2020, the German government gave Mozer and Sitt, the Israeli filmmakers, permission to use 15 hours of the Eichmann recordings (these are the remaining hours of the original tapes that had long ago been taped over by Sassen, but not before they were transcribed).
The documentary film presents select clips from the audio tapes while staging superbly acted re-enactments of the interview sessions in Buenos Aires in 1957. Clips included in the film plainly reveal Eichmann’s unapologetic anti-Semitic sentiments and his central role in orchestrating the deaths of millions of European Jews. Unfortunately, although prosecutors in the famous Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961 were informed of the existence of the tapes, they were only able to obtain the transcript. Still, the transcript ultimately served as key evidence in the case against Eichmann and, as an unexpected result, uncomfortable moral quandaries arose for the Israeli government during the Eichmann trial.
ABOUT OUR POST-FILM SPEAKER
Dr. Volker Benkert is an associate professor at Arizona State University in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Dr. Benkert is a member of the Honors faculty and Center for Jewish Studies and Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies. We are proud to have his long-time support and participation with the BJE/PHA/ASU’s Educators’ Conference on the Holocaust held each year for Arizona teachers.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
