A week before the interview takes place, the multifaceted actor and singer Jean-Pierre Noher premiered the play “The Hunter and the Good Nazi” Argentine journalist and playwright Mario Diament, along with his colleague and friend Ernesto Claudio. Directed by Daniel Marcove, it reflects the real meeting between the famous Jewish Austro-Hungarian researcher Simón Wiesenthal and the German architect Albert Speer in 1975. Noher plays the former who, after being imprisoned during World War II in the Mauthausen-Gusen extermination camp, dedicated most of his life to locating and identifying Nazi criminals who were on the run, in order to bring them to justice. Claudio, in turn, represents Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production of that Germany, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, who was convicted in the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to twenty years in prison, and who managed to avoid, by little, the death penalty. After serving his sentence, he was released in 1966. Using abundant documentation to dramatize this extraordinary moment, Diament’s work explores the possibility of a dialogue between a victim of the Holocaust and a perpetrator, beyond putting into questions the role of justice in cases of crimes against humanity.
Noher has a shared history with Wiesenthal: “My paternal grandparents were murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and my father, Rolf Patrick Noher, at age 13, was able to survive thanks to being taken from the maison d’Izieu, a home for children in the south of France, disguised as as an altar boy, with the help of a priest, before he was taken to Drancy concentration camp. He was welcomed by Christian homes that sheltered Jewish boys. My mother, Renée, and her family fled Nazism and were in Argentina. When peace was restored, they returned to their native France. Therefore, I am a direct descendant of that genocide“.
Putting yourself in the shoes of historical figures is a constant in the career of the interpreter born in Paris. For example, in national films “A love of Borges” (2000) and “Lunch” (2015), embodied the famous writer. She even repeated it for the scene in “Borges and Peron”, where he made a pair with Víctor Laplace. Also in the miniseries “Blessed Dream” (2021) from Amazon Prime Video, about the life of Diego Maradona, he played the popular Guillermo Coppola. “I have a lot of fun doing that kind of work. I am very obsessive. I always make the difference that the actors are not imitators, but interpreters who try to recreate the person trying not to betray the imaginary of the spectators”, he explains.
To this is added that, in the series “December 2001”, which will be seen on the Star+ platform, addresses former President Fernando De la Rúa during that month and year, in which our country had to face the consequences of one of the worst economic, political and social crises in its history; which produced the induced resignation of the president.
News: Did you know about the relationship between Wiesenthal and Speer?
Jean-Pierre Noher: No. Yes, who were they, what they mean and represent each one, even today. But because of my family history during World War II, as soon as I read this extraordinary work, I felt an absolute moral obligation to do it.
News: How did you approach Wiesenthal?
Nighter: I really like researching and composing, although in this case, unlike when I did Borges, Coppola or De la Rúa, I don’t physically resemble him at all, which I found out was a playful, histrionic and charming guy. Without intending it, he was an expressive vehicle to bring me very close to the memory I have of my father, to his accent, and to all that Jewish and European identity that contains me. Because I am like a zelig: on the one hand, French because I was born in Paris, on the other, Jewish; but since with my family we came to live in Argentina when I was very young, I also feel deeply Argentine.
News: What do you think about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Nighter: I am against all wars and this one seems crazy to me. The play mentions Ukrainian cities that are being bombed. That’s why I said that doing it was a personal duty that also involves my concept of respect for life. It is incredible that eighty years after the end of the last world war, man has not learned to resolve things in another way and that international organizations are unable to disarm countries. I believe that there is a war industry that continues to grow, that is increasingly dangerous, and that targets the heart of every human being on the planet because no one is safe. It’s taking it to scary levels. Again. The extreme right in the world has political space again due to the enormous frustration of the middle class that everything costs them so much. In France, in the last legislative elections, in which I voted for the socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen’s deputies went from eight to one hundred. Plus the pandemic that locked us up.
News: Given this conflictive international reality, is it possible to generate a change in mentality?
Nighter: I was always a person who believes that everything is with the other. One cannot be happy locked up in a country if there is a slum next door. There is no way. I think solidarity should be encouraged. We live in very unfair countries. With a lot of accumulation and very poor distribution.
News: What do you feel artists can do to try and turn this around?
Nighter: From a minimal place, I would say, but educational and formative, we once again have the responsibility of awakening people’s memory. This also prompted me to get involved in the theater proposal. To make people understand that these things have already happened and that we cannot always repeat the same thing.
