The reflection of evil The Los Angeles Times has a thorough article (the free registration is worth it for this article) on Leni Riefenstahl. I don't know what to think about this. I suspect that this woman was more involved in the National Socialist genocide than she lets on (as a bystander). On the other hand I suspect this is true of most Germans (I don't subscribe to the extreme thesis of Hitler's Willing Executioners, that I think is a warped inversion of anti-Semitism). All humans wish to think they are good. I remember watching a film on the Holocaust and one scene that showed a German soldier refusing to shoot Jews that have been lined up. The commanding officer forces him to stand in line with the Jews, and he himself is shot. This is the sort of courage Leni Riefenstahl no doubt would never have shown. And yet, does that detract from her greatness as a film-maker? What if Leni had been a Communist film-maker lionizing Stalin who declared that they didn't know the details of his terror?