The Muslim producer of a Holocaust film

Maziar Bahari was a reporter for NEWSWEEK when he was arrested in Iran as a spy and imprisoned and tortured for four months. He is the subject of the superb Jon Stewart film ROSEWATER.

Earlier, Bahari had produced a film about the St. Louis, the ship carrying Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany who were refused entry into several countries–including the US. He was, according to

Wikipedia, the first Muslim to make a film dealing with the holocaust.

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He’s what Wikipedia writes about Bahari and the film about the St. Louis:

Asked what motivated him to make the film, he mentioned courses he took at college, where he

“studied the modern history of the Jews and I was fascinated by the history of the Jews in North America. I took a course on Freud and religion and the professor talked a lot about early 20th century anti-

Semitism in the U.S. and Canada. I had no idea that even up until the 1950s Jews were discriminated against in North America, so I wanted to explore that further. As an immigrant, I was interested in the

history of Jewish immigration from Europe to America. So I looked for a story to combine all these elements and came across the story of the St. Louis.”

Later, while he was imprisoned in Iran, the film “haunted” him, with his interrogators accusing him of being on a mission to work for Zionists.