German film portrays priest's struggle with conscience in Dachau

Published: 2004-09-17

TORONTO (CNS) -- The German-language film "The Ninth Day" might seem on the surface to be another film trying to burn the memory of the Holocaust onto celluloid, but it is really about a man faced with temptation. Before screening the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Volker Schlondorff told the audience he made the movie "not because it is morally important; it's just because the human story is so deep and so suspenseful." The film is the true story of Msgr. Jean Bernard, the prewar head of the International Catholic Film Organization and postwar editor of the Luxembourg daily Luxemburger Wort. In between, Msgr. Bernard was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. He was prisoner number 25487, one of nearly 2,600 priests sent to Dachau as punishment for speaking out against Nazi policies. More than half of them died there. The diary Msgr. Bernard kept of his 20 months in Dachau became a best seller in Luxembourg in 1945. A strange episode from the diary forms the basis for "The Ninth Day."

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