Filming at Terezin banned following porn film outrage
A strict ban on video and film cameras was introduced on Monday at the Czech Republic's Terezin memorial, in response to claims in a tabloid newspaper that a porn actor-producer was planning to use the former concentration camp as the setting for his latest erotic film. The Czech tabloid Super claimed on Saturday that porn star Robert Rosenberg was working on a new film called "The Way It Was," featuring shots of SS officers having sex with female prisoners. Unsurprisingly, Terezin's mayor as well as groups representing former political prisoners are outraged. Rob Cameron has more.
Terezin, or Theresienstadt in German, was a bleak and menacing place, even before the Nazis turned the town and its 18th century fortress into a concentration camp. Inside the fortress, political prisoners were tortured and executed. Outside, in the town itself, some 140,000 Jews from across Europe were herded into a ghetto. Thousands died there from disease and malnutrition; almost 90,000 were later sent to Auschwitz. Today, Terezin has changed little, and walking the dusty, deserted streets to the redbrick fortress is a sobering experience.
Several films have been made at Terezin, but nothing quite like "The Way It Was." The work of Czech porn star turned director Robert Rosenberg, the film is still very much in the planning stages, but Saturday's edition of the tabloid newspaper Super said Rosenberg had already filmed some atmosphere shots on video as a regular tourist, and these were to be completed with sex scenes shot at different locations. The story has caused outrage among staff at Terezin. Vojtech Blodyk is the memorial's deputy director.
"If someone tried to record something at the camp then we immediately take steps to ban it, and at the present time we're also trying to find out what legal steps we can take to prevent such tasteless rubbish being produced."
Robert Rosenberg offered a vigorous defence of the project to the tabloid paper, saying he had no intention of recording sex scenes inside the camp itself. But if the interview with Super is to be believed, he's serious about using the concentration camp motto for a porn flick. "People were raped in concentration camps. That's a historical fact," he's quoted as saying. And one final bitter twist - reports say the film will be targeted at the German audience.
