In 1945, the layout of the room was a bit different. In the aftermath of World War II, Courtroom 600 in war-torn Nuremberg had to accommodate legal teams from multiple nations, all converging to prosecute some of the most heinous criminals in history. The gravity of that trial, where justice grappled with acts of unprecedented systematic cruelty, is almost unimaginable today.
Nearly 80 years later, this iconic courtroom space would transform into a movie theater for one evening. A contemporary German audience, people whose grandparents might have been alive during those dark times, took their seats on the same wooden spectator benches of the Nuremberg trials to watch “Nathan-ism,” a feature documentary exploring the story of one of its most unlikely players—Nathan Hilu, a Jewish-American GI who escorted Nazi defendants from their prison cells to the courtroom each day of the trial.
Nathan’s stories, once confined to our conversations and the footage I had painstakingly collected, were now alive in this room, echoing off the very walls that had witnessed the trials of Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and other Nazi leaders.
Nathan had spent much of his life desperately trying to make his memories heard. Hilu passed away in 2019, and for much of his life, he had remained largely invisible to the world—his experiences tucked away in the recesses of his mind and in the frantic drawings he created to make sense of it all. Bringing his story to the screen was my attempt to give voice to his experiences, ensuring that the echoes of the past would resonate in the present.
My own understanding of the Holocaust came from history classes and textbooks—secondhand sources that attempted to convey the horrors of that time. But Nathan’s role in these trials placed him right in the midst of history as it unfolded. Tasked with guarding the defendants and preventing them from harming themselves, he ensured the chief architects of the Holocaust lived to stand trial for their crimes.
Every week for years, I made my way to Nathan’s modest Lower East Side apartment. It became a ritual—I’d stop by the local diner to pick up coffee and a slice of cake, knowing how much he appreciated those small gestures. In return, I was welcomed into his world, a world shaped by memories of his time as a young U.S. soldier in Germany, memories as vivid as the day they were formed. As a filmmaker, I was fascinated by how Nathan’s creative mind processed these experiences over a lifetime of mostly solitary reflection. He never married or had children, and by the time I entered his life, his circle of friends was small. Yet, every visit felt like a first-time “show-and-tell” as Nathan animatedly recounted the stories behind his latest batch of drawings, transporting himself back to those moments in Nuremberg. His voice would rise and fall with energy, his gnarled, wrinkled hands gesturing as if reliving those memories. Nathan was 18 years old again, recounting the conversations he swore he had with prisoners like Hermann Göring through their cell doors. Nathan’s recollections carried a tension—the struggle to reconcile the banality of the Nazis’ appearance with the monstrosity of their actions. His drawings, created over decades, were tangible reminders of history’s lasting impact on the human psyche. Nathan’s vibrant, almost cartoon-like images stood in stark contrast to the grim scenes they portrayed. With Sharpie markers and oil-pastel crayons, Nathan gave form to the ghosts that haunted him. His works became visual memoirs, each stroke of pen or crayon a battle against the loneliness and isolation that so often accompany elder life and veteran life in America. At the same time, his art offered a unique perspective on Holocaust remembrance, capturing not only the atrocities, but the pivotal moment when the larger world awoke to them. Nathan used art as a vehicle to be heard even before he was certain anyone would listen. Lacking formal training or financial stability, he used whatever materials were available—office paper, markers, crayons—transforming them into vessels for his deepest thoughts and memories. It was only in the final decades of his life that curators and collectors began to take notice—an evolution Nathan marveled at, even as he understood he might never see his work fully appreciated. It’s a strange feeling to lose the subject of your film during the filming process. Nathan’s voice remained with me as I was editing the film, guiding the story we were telling together. Now, that same voice echoed in the courtroom at Nuremberg—the very place that had shaped his coming of age and the course of his life. His presence felt so strong, so vivid, that it was hard to accept he wasn’t there to see the final film. While the grief of his passing had been temporarily buried in favor of focusing on the all-encompassing task of completing the film in his honor, in this moment, the reality of his absence truly sank in, leaving me with a deep sense of closure and loss. The postpartum emotions of completing the film and missing Nathan mingled with the awe at being in the presence of this historic space. As the credits rolled and the lights came back on, I sat in silence, absorbing the weight of the moment. This courtroom, once the stage for an international effort to prosecute crimes against humanity, had, for one evening, echoed with the voice of a single man whose story had come full circle. “Nathan-ism,” my film about Nathan Hilu’s life and art, features the words of U.S. prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, who in 1945 warned that the “sinister influences” represented by the defendants would persist long after their bodies returned to dust. His warning feels chillingly relevant today, as dark ideologies continue to find fertile ground. The past, we are reminded daily, is not as distant as we would like to believe. Elan Golod is a producer and director. After first being exposed to filmmaking during his military service in Israel, Elan honed his skills at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has worked in the film industry as an editor on a wide range of projects and as a short-form documentary director. After being part of the editing team on Mike Birbiglia’s film “Sleepwalk with Me” (Sundance, SXSW), Golod co-directed and edited the documentary short “Mike Birbiglia: How to Make What This Is.” While working on “Nathan-ism,” he also co-edited Birbiglia’s “Don’t Think Twice” (SXSW, Tribeca) and Maya Zinshtein’s documentary “Til Kingdom Come” (DocAviv, IDFA).
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