A German prisoner kneels on the ground with his hands tied. He screams anti-Semitic expletives at the gang of Jewish "hunters" around him. A soldier known as "The Bear Jew" approaches with a baseball bat, salivating at the prospect of revenge. He clubs the German to death.

If this scene from the movie Inglourious Basterds*, an extremely funny and shocking two-and-a-half hours of hokum, illuminates a Jewish thirst for retribution, it’s as well to remember that the original "obsession" was of the Nazis’ making. It’s also worth noting that the filmmaker in question here (Quentin Tarantino) is not Jewish.

World War 2 consisted of two separate wars. One was the titanic military struggle between the Axis powers and the allied forces, a confrontation that ended in May 1945 with Hitler’s suicide and the Third Reich’s surrender in Berlin. The other war was the one the Nazis fought against the Jews. And that ended in places whose names have entered the lexicon as bywords for barbarity: Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka, among others.  

This was the war Hitler obsessed over. It’s worth noting his final will and testament in which Hitler spoke about what mattered to him most. "Above all, I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, International Jewry."

Treading carefully
After World War 2, filmmakers were perhaps understandably reluctant to tackle the Holocaust directly. War films essentially spanned two phases. The first, lasting 30 years, was the straightforward account of military confrontations and specific events. Some of the more memorable offerings were: Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Longest Day (1962), The Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Battle of Britain (1969), A Bridge at Remagen (1969), Tora, Tora, Tora (1970) and A Bridge Too Far (1977). These were sober, sweeping spectacles that narrated events matter of factly enough. Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Valkyrie (2008) were in a similar vein.

None of these movies, as great though some were, addressed the delicate question of the Jewish wounded psyche. Holocaust, the TV series in the late 1970s starring Meryl Streep, changed all that. For the first time the Jewish tragedy unfolded. TV movies like Playing For Time (1980), The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988) continued along similar lines. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) focused on the so-called righteous gentile, The Pianist (2002) focused on the individual plight of an ordinary man trapped in the Polish ghetto. But in all these films the Jews were victims.

Two major recent movies sought to lift the Jews out of their victimhood and recast them as avengers. Perhaps it was a generational sea change. Younger filmmakers sought a new take on the Holocaust. In particular, the deep unspoken need to dispel notions of Jews submitting meekly and marching into the gas chamber. To put it crudely, younger Jews, weary of seeing their history expressed solely through victimhood, oppression and fear, wanted to see tough Jews bashing Nazi heads.  

Sadistic and graphic violence
Tarantino’s black comedy is basically a Jewish revenge fantasy. A group of Jewish Americans, known as the Inglourious Basterds, is parachuted into occupied World War 2 France. The Basterds, led by Aldo Raine, (Brad Pitt), assault Nazis gleefully, scalping and tattooing their victims.

After the first scene in which a Jewish family hiding under the floorboards in a French farmhouse is murdered at the hands of the grinning Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz), the film shifts gear to make the hunted the hunter. It’s a redemptive fantasy to see the SS officer who spits his defiance at the Inglourious Basterds, pummelled to death. Although entirely fictional and undeniably sadistic, graphic and debased, it’s still pulsating entertainment.

Above all, it’s an alternative history that most people would relish. At the end of the film, Hitler, Goebbels and Goring are all assembled in a Paris movie theatre watching the fictional exploits of a heroic German infantryman, presumably a German version of Audie Murphy, the American World War 2 can-do soldier who arguably was the spiritual ancestor of Rambo – except that Murphy was a real-life person. Hitler and his entourage laugh uproariously as the celluloid German sniper single-handedly wins the war.

Suddenly the movie is interrupted by the face of the Jewish cinema projector (Melanie Laurent) who managed to escape Landa’s clutches after her family’s murder. The cinema is engulfed in an inferno of flames and the basterds rain bullets down on the top Nazis. Hitler and his henchmen crawl along the aisles, trying to shield themselves from the onslaught.

They rush to the barred exits, knocking each other over in a blind panic. Some of the most loathsome war criminals ever to stalk planet Earth are transformed from omnipotent gods into scurrying rats. Meanwhile, the audience is salivating with the vicarious thrill. One could almost liken it to an orgasmic frenzy, the ultimate catharsis, especially to Jewish audiences. Incidentally, Inglourious Basterds works much better than Tarantino’s previous efforts such as the Kill Bill movies. Special kudos, in particular, must go to Waltz as the cheerful "Jew-hunter" with a penchant for milk and apple strudel, surely a certainty for a best supporting actor nod.