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The New York Times

FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; Jewish Experience, Lived and Recalled

"Like Mr. Finkiel, Jeff Krulik is sensitive to the ironies and absurdities of even the most terrible episodes in Jewish history. His witty and touching documentary, ''Hitler's Hat,'' interviews veterans of a United States Army Reconnaissance and Intelligence unit.

The day after they helped liberate Dachau (and the day that Hitler killed himself), one of the G.I.'s, a Jewish soldier named Richard Marowitz, liberated a top hat from Hitler's Munich apartment. The hat had an ''A. H.'' monogram on its crown, and Mr. Marowitz, the unit's resident joker and an amateur magician, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. One of his buddies makes this into a mordant historical joke: Hitler was so upset when he heard that a Jew had jumped on his favorite hat, that he shot himself. In the film the hat becomes both souvenir and symbol, suggesting that fascism was defeated not just by courage and force of arms, but also by pluck and good humor."

—A. O. SCOTT, NYTimes.com Review FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; Jewish Experience, Lived and Recalled

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The New York Daily News

Chosen for quality
The Jewish Film Festival has something for everyone

"Equally compelling is "Hitler's Hat," an intelligent, offbeat portrait of veteran G.I.s who reunite and remember their last days of the war."

—Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

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Village Voice

"The typically variegated show opens with the local premiere of appropriately named Weather Underground a documentary portrait of the disaffected ultras straight Amerikkka loved to hate. Also screening: two new features, one non-narrative, by festival favorite James Fotopoulos, always outré Jon Moritsugu's "anti-digital video" Scum rock, and Jeff Krulik's bizarre World War II nostalgia trip Hitler's Hat. Closer to the edge: a live projector perf by the amazing Luis Recoder, plus an actual 8mm, vintage psychedelia, and a doc on feminist porn."

—Hoberman, 10th New York Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, 212-505-5181.

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The Forward

By ROBERT SKLAR

"In a world premiere screening on January 14, the documentary "Hitler's Hat," directed by Jeff Krulik, recounts how Rich Marowitz, a Jewish-American soldier with the 42nd Rainbow Division, found Hitler's formal top hat in the dictator's Munich apartment, shortly after his unit participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. He's famously photographed in the hat as a military publicity stunt, holding up a comb to mimic Hitler's mustache. Later a professional magician, Marowitz rediscovers the hat more than half a century later in the basement of his Albany, N.Y., home, and displays it at a reunion of his Army group."

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The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar

The 46th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar

"ESSAYS, EXPERIMENTS AND EXCAVATIONS"
Friday, June 16 - Thursday, June 22, 2000
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

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The Nashua Telegraph

Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates, succepitque ignem foliis, atque arida circum nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam. Tum Cererem corruptam undis Cerealiaque arma expediunt fessi rerum, frugesque receptas et torrere parant flammis et frangere saxo.

Interea magno misceri murmure pontum, emissamque hiemem sensit Neptunus, et imis stagna refusa vadis, graviter commotus; et alto prospiciens, summa placidum caput extulit unda. Disiectam Aeneae, toto videt aequore classem, fluctibus oppressos Troas caelique ruina, nec latuere doli fratrem Iunonis et irae. Eurum ad se Zephyrumque vocat, dehinc talia fatur.

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ABC News

‘I Stole Hitler’s Hat’
The Brooklyn Man Who ‘Liberated’
the Nazi Dictator’s Top Hat

by Buck Wolf

"April 16 — We can only hope that one day soon a brave U.S. soldier will storm Osama bin Laden's cave, grab his turban defiantly, and become the next Richard Marowitz.

Historians will note that on April 30, 1945, Marowitz and platoon members from the Army's 42nd Rainbow Divsion knocked on the door of Adolf Hitler's home in Munich, which was still in Nazi territory.

The master of the house wasn't home. It was the twilight of World War ii. Hitler was commiting suicide in a bunker in Berlin, as American, Russian and British troops closed in on the city."

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IndieWire

"endearing audience favorite"

—Indie Film Page

New York Underground Film Festival Invokes Spirit of Activism in Trying Times

by Joshua Sanchez

"A more light-hearted, yet equally relevant and thought-provoking note, was struck by legendary underground documentary director Jeff Krulik ("Heavy Metal Parking Lot"). His endearing audience-favorite "Hitler's Hat" follows the reunion of the 42nd Rainbow Division and charismatic, Jewish-American G.I.-turned magician Richard Marowitz's account of his division's liberation of the Dachau concentration camp during World War II. The division was assigned to raid the Munich apartment of Adolf Hitler and Marowitz kept one of Hitler's top hats as a souvenir. The film illustrates the camaraderie of soldiers during times of war and provided an important subtext to the dialog going on in America about the war in Iraq. Showcased with "Hitler's Hat," Seth Grossman and Judd Frankel's uproariously disturbing "American Pork," examines the modern breeding techniques of the swine industry, including a riotous sequence documenting the collection of pig semen."

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Tablet Newspaper

Out of Frame by John Tynes

GUS VAN SANT AND HITLER'S HAT

"Then there's Hitler's Hat (3/16). It's an irresistible story: on April 30, 1945, a group of American soldiers stormed Hitler's apartment in Munich. One of them was Richard Marowitz, a 19-year-old Jewish-American GI. Marowitz found a luxurious black top hat in a closet, complete with Hitler's initials stamped into the lining. His first reaction, coming a day after he and his buddies stumbled into the horrors of Dachau, is so perfectly human it makes you want to weep: he threw it to the ground and stomped on it. The film mixes interviews with Marowitz - who still has the hat - and his fellow soldiers with scenes from their unit's reunion, some movie clips, and historical footage, set to a peppy selection of vintage anti-Hitler songs. It moves smoothly from humor to atrocity to nostalgia, telling a wonderful footnote from World War II not in terms of battlefield tactics and grand strategic gambles, but from the perspective of purely human experience. The filmmaker is Jeff Krulik, whose Heavy Metal Parking Lot became a fast classic; Hitler's Hat should join it. It's a delight you shouldn't miss. The Jewish Film Festival's web site is at ajcseattle.org."

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Guard Times

by Maj. Richard Goldenberg HQ, 42nd ID (Mech)

THEY CAME. THEY SAW. THEY STOMPED.

Documentary Film Highlights Rainbow Division Veteran

"NEW YORK CITY After more than 50 years of storage in an Albany basement, the story of Adolph Hitler's black top hat and its journey from Munich to New York was told on the big screen here at Lincoln Center. The premiere of "Hitler's Hat" was screened in Manhattan on January 14th after more than two years of independent filming and production.

The documentary film "Hitler's Hat" portrays the veterans of the 42nd Infantry Division during the final days of World War Two. The film follows the members of the 222nd Infantry Regiment's Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon at a Rainbow Division Veteran's Association reunion. The Rainbow veterans discuss their experiences together, the bonds of comradeship and of course, the liberation of Hitler's tuxedo top hat from his Munich apartment in April of 1945.

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