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Film

Review: Shattering Silence

Eric Friedler’s sharp documentary takes a biting look at Germany’s richest family

November 16, 2009 12:41
quandt

ByJessica Elgot, Jessica Elgot

1 min read

Eric Friedler’s sharp documentary takes a biting look at Germany’s richest family, and asks the question the Quandts hoped they could keep silent forever – where did they get their fortune from?

The family have always claimed their fortune came from their ownership of car giant BMV. But in Shattering Silence Friedler goes back to explore Gunter Quandt’s role in the Third Reich, and his exploitation of thousands of slave labourers in his factories, Jews, resistance fighters and prisoners of war.

The economic plans for the factory made allowances for 80 workers to die from lead poisoning each month. But perhaps even more extraordinary, from a personal angle, is how Quandt’s lust for power became so great, he even married off his ex-wife to Josef Goebbels.

Friedler asks the vital questions in this groundbreaking film on the much under-investigated topic of the corporate involvement in the Holocaust. Why were the Quandts never prosecuted as profiteers from Nazism at Nuremberg? Why did the US and the British cover-up the Quandt’s role in Holocaust? And why, now, do the Quandt’s refuse to acknowledge the source of their wealth?