BROOKE GLADSTONE:
There was another genre of exploitative fiction that took its cues, or at least inspiration for its covers, from America's sexy and sadistic comics past. It was called Stalag fiction and for a couple of years in the early '60s it was an Israeli obsession, fueled by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which began in April 1961 in an Israeli court, where the first-hand accounts of survivors finally broke the silence surrounding the Holocaust.

Stalag fiction flooded Israeli bookstalls, trashy little reads written in pidgin Hebrew to reinforce the illusion that these were translated accounts of American pilots shot down over Germany.

The salacious covers telegraphed the plot, which was always the same – the imprisoned pilot is menaced by sexy whip-wielding female SS guards with unbuttoned khaki shirts. They torture and abuse him sexually until the tables turn and he gets to torture and violate them.

In his new documentary, Stalag, filmmaker Ari Libsker suggests that this short-lived literary craze shaped, even perverted the image of the Holocaust for a whole generation of Israelis. And the fact that the Stalag's protagonists were American made them even more seductive.
ARI LIBSKER:
When they were like teenager, they were convinced that the writers was an American and it was like autobiography of the writers. This was the way to sell this book because nobody wants to read the Hebrew literature. Everything that came from America was good.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Let's talk about the timing of these books. Their publication came around just after the beginning of the trial of Adolf Eichmann. How did Eichmann's trial relate to the creation or the popularity of these books?
ARI LIBSKER:
I think before the Eichmann trial the survivors in the Israeli society did not want to speak about what's happened. And when the trial started, people started to talk about what's happened in the camps, in Auschwitz, in Buchenwald, in Dachau.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
How do you think these books contribute to the young generation of the '60s' idea of what went on during the Holocaust?
ARI LIBSKER:
First of all, in those time, we didn’t have no information about what's happening. We have only read Anne Frank. And Anne Frank's diary stops in the moment that the Nazis take her to the camp.

And most of the parents, they were ashamed. They want to start a new life. They want to forget the past. And there was only one man that gave the information to the Israeli people. It was Ka-Tzetnik. He was the first Holocaust writer in the world. He was before Elie Wiesel. He was before Primo Levi. He published his first book in '46.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Let's talk about Ka-Tzetnik. His books were actually the precursors of these Stalag pulp novels.
ARI LIBSKER:
He was “Mr. Holocaust” of Israel, and his books considered to be like holy books. But when you analyze his way of writing, you realize that his book was completely pornography. This guy writes a book about “House of Doll.”
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
The book you're referring to, The Dollhouse, talked about a pleasure block within Auschwitz, which was populated with Jewish girl prisoners who were there to serve the guards.
ARI LIBSKER:
Serve the guards, Nazi guards. But in this place they did not accept any Jewish woman. There were no Jewish women inside. The women that were in this block were German women.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And you suggest that basically, even though he is regarded as a serious literary force in Israel, he is the father to the pulp novels known as Stalags because they were both drenched with sex and Nazism, a very potent combination.
ARI LIBSKER:
Yes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But The Dollhouse was celebrated, while the Stalag was condemned.
ARI LIBSKER:
This was the reason that I made the movie. It's easy to criticize low culture, but it's hard to criticize a person that is considered to be high literature. And they think Ka-Tzetnik made more damage than the Stalags because everybody knew, like if you were a child and you read the Stalag like two times, five times, you're growing up and you understand it's a fiction, because they understand. But they did not understand that Ka-Tzetnik is kind of a fiction writer.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So the censors came out after the Stalags, and they went into the kiosks and they went into the streets and they gathered them up.
ARI LIBSKER:
Yeah.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And they ceased to be available for sale.
ARI LIBSKER:
But the Stalags continued to be a thing of teenagers. They used to take it to school and change it between each other. You know, it was like, I collect this Stalag, you have this Stalag, and it started to be like to collect stamps.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So the kids, the teenagers who read the Stalags in their formative years, in the early '60s, they're now in their late fifties and early sixties themselves.
ARI LIBSKER:
Yes. They are the generation that control Israel now. Like this is the age of Ehud Barak, the age of Ehud Olmert and the age of Binyamin Netanyahu. Like my parents are in this age, and they read Stalag also, you know. Everybody used to read it.

There is, in the movie, a person that says, you know, when I was 12 and 13, the first time you fantasize a Nazi woman. The Stalag was the only pornography in the '60s in Israel. There was no other alternative.

There was like sex education books. Stalag was hardcore, and it was connecting between pornography and violence, and sadistic and Holocaust, together.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So Holocaust researchers seem to agree, have come to the conclusion that there were no Jewish bordellos. There were no "Doll Houses”-
ARI LIBSKER:
Yes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
- such as was described by Ka-Tzetnik. And yet, his books continue to be taught in the curriculum, have been taught in the curriculum since 1992. Why?
ARI LIBSKER:
I don't have any answer to this. I didn’t know why.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
How do you connect the Stalags and Ka-Tzetnik to the way that Israel handles the legacy of the Holocaust today?
ARI LIBSKER:
I think that we still deal with the Holocaust in a pornographic way. It's the way that we repeat the horror again and again.

I think what's happening today, it's even worse than what was in the '60s, from my opinion, because now we're going every year to Auschwitz, and we celebrate, as I mentioned before, the horror of the Holocaust.

To get more attention from the young generation, it's to give them the hard core of death, violence, and, in the case of Ka-Tzetnik, it's sex. The way that we celebrate the horror time after time, movie after movie, it's something that we become addicted to. We forgot why we do it.

This is a fetish to horror. It's not helping anyone. It's not teaching anyone nothing. It's entertainment. It's like the Stalag.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Ari, thank you very much.
ARI LIBSKER:
You're welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Journalist and documentarian Ari Libsker's new film is called "Stalag."