Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the movie “Pastor Hall” (1940)

Enlarged reproduction of a pressbook page for the British feature film “Pastor Hall,” released in the United States on September 13, 1940. This reproduction was created for the 2007 “Cinema Judaica” exhibition at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York City. It provides a transcription of the introduction that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt recorded for the movie’s American release. “Pastor Hall” was an adaptation of the 1938 play written by Ernst Toller, a Prussian Jewish veteran of World War I. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Toller was declared an enemy of the state and immigrated to England, and moved again to the United States in 1936. In the film, a Lutheran minister resists the Nazification of German Protestant churches, and is imprisoned in a concentration camp as a result. He manages to escape, but is eventually killed. It equates Hitler with the Antichrist, bent on destroying not only the Jewish people, but Christianity as well. The protagonist is based on Rev. Martin Niemöller, who was arrested in 1936 and sent to Dachau concentration camp. ”Pastor Hall” was brought to the United States by James Roosevelt, son of First Lady Eleanor and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The producers had to cut 5 minutes of the most brutal scenes before it was given approval by the American censors. The First Lady recorded a prologue to the film, informing the American viewers that it was representative of actual events. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.