SOURCE: Tegel, Susan. “Leni Riefenstahl's ‘Gypsy Question.’” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 23, no. 1 (2003): 3-10.

In the following essay, Tegel provides a factual account of the legal proceedings surrounding the question of Riefenstahl's use of gypsy concentration camp victims as extras in her film Tiefland.

Leni Riefenstahl's 100th birthday celebrations on 22 August 2002 were marred by an announcement from the Frankfurt Prosecutor's Office. That day was chosen to make public the decision to launch a preliminary investigation into claims that she had denied the Holocaust. This was for comments she made about the fate of the Gypsy extras whom she used in her second and last feature film, Tiefland (The Lowlands). In an interview published in the colour supplement of the Frankfurter Rundschau on 27 April 2002 she had claimed: ‘After the war we have seen again all the Gypsies, who worked on Tiefland. Nothing has happened to a single...