The mayonnaise caper

The elderly German who opened the door of the "Hansel and Gretel" house in picturesque Heidelberg looked innocuous.

"A really tall guy with an abnormally sized head," recalls Australian documentary filmmaker Philippe Mora. "And a St Bernard dog, complete with that little rum barrel round its neck."

Yet this innocent-looking man was a Nazi war criminal - Adolf Hitler's architect and armaments minister Albert Speer, sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment at the Nuremberg war trials.

"I was taken aback when he opened the door himself," the acclaimed French-born Melbourne director and painter explains on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.

"He said, 'I understand you are Australian.' Then he launched into a speech about how the British had betrayed the Aussies in the war.

"The next thing he asked was, 'Are you Jewish?' When I said yes he let me in. Coming from Australia I had no fear. But things were put into perspective later when I phoned Melbourne to tell my dad [Georges Mora, born Gunter Morawski in Leipzig in 1913] I had just had lunch with Albert Speer.

"He said, 'Did you kill him?' He was only half joking."

Mora's 1973 documentary Swastika - featuring home-movie footage of Hitler's private life - has just been shown in Berlin for the first time since it was banned in Germany 36 years ago.

Because of the publicity, Mora learnt new information about his father's battle against the Nazis - first as a Jewish student in Berlin during the infamous "burning of the books" bonfire in 1933, then as a refugee smuggler with the French Resistance alongside his good friend Marcel Marceau, the internationally famous mime artist.

Mora, 60, praised the bravery of his father and Marceau. "Marceau told me this story about my dad being called Mr Mayonnaise in the French Resistance."

His father, who had escaped from Germany after the book-burning, noticed German soldiers would never search sandwiches containing mayonnaise in case drips stained their uniforms.

So the Resistance wrapped the identity papers of Jewish children being smuggled over borders in greaseproof paper, smeared them with mayonnaise and inserted them into sandwiches.

"Marceau started miming to keep children quiet as they were escaping. It had nothing to do with show business. He was miming for his life."

Mora said Speer had taken him to "the fanciest restaurant in Heidelberg". "All the waiters had duelling scars. [Note: Duelling and duelling scars have long been something of a student tradition in Germany and Austria. The custom long predates the Nazis -- JR] It was like something out of a Mel Brooks movie. I'd say, 'I'll have the schnitzel, please,' and they would click their heels.

"I asked him what he would do if Hitler walked into the room now. He said, 'I think I'd have to do what he asked. His personal power on me was so great.' It's amazing he said that in 1973."


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