By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Stella Goldschlag committed suicide in 1994. She would possibly have saved many lives had she done it 50 years earlier.
Stella, A Life, starring Paula Beer in the title role, focuses on Goldschlag’s activities in Berlin during the 1940s, at the height of the Holocaust. In return for her parents being sent to Theresienstadt instead of Auschwitz, she acted as a lookout for the Gestapo, identifying her fellow Jews and thereby enabling the Nazis to send them to death camps.
Unbeknown to Goldschlag, the Nazis didn’t keep their end of the Faustian bargain; they later transferred Goldschlag’s parents to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.
In this biographic, Goldschlag patrolled a main square in Berlin, betraying acquaintances and friends alike. To prep her for the job, the Gestapo beat her mercilessly, indicating just what might be done to her if she didn’t comply.
At first reluctant to fulfill her assignment, she gradually became more enthusiastic about the nasty job, aligning herself with her psychological captors – a condition that later would be named the Stockholm Syndrome.
Beer plays her part very well, with her character going from a self-absorbed, would-be jazz singer to a traitor to her people. After the war, she was remorseful and reviled, leading to her eventual suicide.
Other outstanding actors in the two-hour movie, now available on many streaming services, are Katja Riemann and Lukas Miko respectively as Goldschlag’s mother and father; Jannis Niewöhner as her boyfriend; and Joel Basman as her Nazi-murdered first husband.
The German-language, English-subtitled film was directed by Killian Riedhof, who also was among a threesome of writers.
So why do I say she should have considered committing suicide 50 years earlier than she did?
She traded her own miserable existence for the lives of many innocent fellow Jews. Their deaths and the non-existence of countless people in future generations were thereby assured. While the loss of any life is deplorable, better that one person sacrifice herself than to be complicit in the deaths of multiple persons.
Ironically, if she hadn’t cooperated with the Gestapo, maybe she could have survived Auschwitz with a clear conscience.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World