It is equally scrupulous and compelling in its reenactment of Babi Yar (airing at 8:30 tonight)-a horrific chapter of the Holocaust that has not been dramatized in American TV films.Īs Herman Wouk, author of both “War and Remembrance” and “The Winds of War” (the 18-hour miniseries telecast in 1983), acknowledged in an essay, “It may grieve the judicious that the great public learns much of its history from works of entertainment. If the colonel seemed even more sinister than the other Nazis in “War and Remembrance,” it may be because this actor, Kenneth Colley, had already played Adolf Eichmann in “Wallenberg” opposite Richard Chamberlain. Paul Blobel the new gas chambers and crematoriums of Auschwitz. “War and Remembrance” utilized a similar connection in Part 5 Sunday, where Hoess proudly showed Col. Perhaps it was because this is not the first time the actor has incarnated Hoess: Gunther Maria Halmer was indeed the same commandant in Alan Pakula’s film version of “Sophie’s Choice.”Īlthough he had played his part alongside Meryl Streep in German, and was now speaking accented English in Dan Curtis’ mammoth re-creation of World War II, a subliminal link was made for those who had seen “Sophie’s Choice.” During the second part of “War and Remembrance” on ABC last week, some viewers might have been struck by how Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, seemed so “real”-even more than the other characters played by an international cast.

Wouk war and remembrance