Reuters ran a story recently about Leni Riefenstahl’s upcoming 100th birthday in which Hitler’s favorite director thinks her post-World War II treatment was unfair.
As a young woman she struggled for fame as a ballet dancer, an actress and later as a film director. She sought out Nazi dictator Hitler, who commissioned “Triumph of the Will,” and “Olympia,” her pioneering film record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
This artistic link to the Nazis, as well as rumors of a romantic link with Hitler, which she has always denied, made Riefenstahl a pariah after the war.
Asked if she was unfairly cast out from her profession, she said: “Yes, I agree 100 percent.”
She defends her movies during the Nazi era as art and said she does not deserve to be forever condemned for this past.
Actually she does deserve to be “forever condemend” for her Nazi past.
Source:
Turning 100, Leni Riefenstahl Speaks About New Film. Adam Tanner, Reuters, July 16, 2002.