Ilona Ziok

Der Junker und der Kommunist

Ilona Ziok

The documentary contrasts the lifes of monarchist Carl-Hans Graf von Hardenberg and communist Fritz Perlitz in the 20th century.

Fritz Bauer - Tod auf Raten

Ilona Ziok

Documentary on Fritz Bauer humanist lawyer, in Germany during the sixties, whose main objective in the few trials achieved against Nazi criminals was whether they were capable of repentance. In this documentary we can sadly see how the entire German judicial system protected with its laws and glosses of these many who committed criminal acts during the period of national socialism where the Holocaust took place, in which 6 million Jews were exterminated. Very probably Bauer's death was a murder that went unpunished by this same corrupted judicial system.

Kurt Gerrons Karussell

Ilona Ziok

Ben Becker, Bente Kahan

This documentary tells the story of an unusual victim of the Nazi holocaust -- Kurt Gerron, a German film actor and cabaret star. During World War II, Gerron went from being a leading light of the German entertainment community (he made over 70 films and sang "Mack the Knife" in the first performance of The Three-Penny Opera) to a prisoner directing a propaganda film for the Nazis about a makeshift club at Theresienstadt, which was described as a "concentration camp for celebrities." Gerron was eventually executed at Auschwitz. Director Ilona Ziok combines archival footage of Gerron with interviews of peers and survivors who describe how Gerron tragically believed his gifts as an entertainer would save his life -- and how he enthusiastically kept performing right up to his death.