Outsiders on the Inside: Tim Blanning reviews a documentary film that explores the experience of Wagner’s Jewish collaborators

Review of Wagner’s Jews, directed Hilan Warshaw, 2013 (Overtone Films, 1 DVD).

March 2015, Volume 9, Number 1, 87–8.

Although constantly under threat from the lazy or the ignorant, the apostrophe matters. A case in point is the title of this fascinating and entertaining DVD. This is about the Jews of Wagner, not Wagner and the Jews. In other words, it concentrates on those Jews who served, admired and even venerated him. On the other hand, there is inevitably an overlap with the familiar debate about the nature of Wagner’s anti-Semitism and its implications for present-day performances. So it begins in present-day Tel Aviv, with a forthright declaration from Uri Chanoch, the Deputy Chairman of the Central Organisation of Holocaust Survivors in Israel: ‘As long as I live and participate in public affairs, I will make sure that Wagner is not played in Israel and his operas also will not be performed.’