Nazi film pictures could solve cinema mystery
The 33 original photos from Tiefland (meaning Lowlands) include shots of young gypsy children who it was alleged were taken from Nazi internment camps and forced to take part in the film.
The archive also includes a 1954 letter in which the director vehemently denies the claim - and that the youngsters were then taken to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers.
In October 2002, when Riefenstahl was 100 years old, the German authorities dropped a case against her for falsely claiming that “each and every one” of the gypsies who were in the film survived the war.
Documents specialist Richard Westwood-Brookes, from auctioneers Mullock Madeley, claimed the photographs could end the debate once and for all about whether she knowingly used Holocaust victims in the film.
“The present photographs of the gypsy children are extremely moving in their simplicity and tragic beyond belief if the claims against Riefenstahl are true,” he said.
Riefenstahl, who died in September 2003 aged 101, is noted for her 1934 Nazi propaganda film about the Nuremberg Rallies, Triumph of the Will.
She is also recognised for breaking new ground in film-making techniques and aesthetics in her depiction of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Tiefland was Riefenstahl’s last feature film. Work on it began in the 1930s but the film was not premiered until 1954.
“Critics of the film claim that it was funded by the Nazis and point out that its theme, the comparison between lowland or valley corruption to mountain purity, is a Nazi-based ideal,” said Mr Westwood-Brookes.
Riefenstahl was officially declared a Nazi sympathiser after the war and went on to reinvent herself as a photographer.
The Tiefland photographs, which she is thought to have taken personally, have a guide price of between £2,000 (€2,990) and £3,000 (€4,480) and go under the hammer at Ludlow Racecourse in Shropshire on Thursday.
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