DEATH OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL

Leni Riefenstahl, the filmaker who made nazi propaganda films, has died at age 101.

Controversy had dogged her for most of her life. After Germany lost the war, Riefenstahl was accused and trialed among the Nazis. She was also suspected of having been been Hitler's lover. She was not convicted in the trials, but was labelled a Nazi sympathiser.

She spent more than half her life trying to live down the films she made for Hitler and for having admired the tyrant who devastated Europe and all but eliminated its Jews.

Even as late as 2002, Riefenstahl was investigated for Holocaust denial after she said she did not know that Gypsies taken from concentration camps to be used as extras in one of her wartime films later died in the camps.

Riefenstahl denied she was a nazi sympathizer, claiming amongst other things that she was guided by the search for beauty, and that she did not want to make the nazi propoganda film "Triumph of the Will", but Hitler was unyielding.

However, an account of a meeting with Riefenstahl by renowned holocaust denier David Irving suggests that she lied about not wanting to make Triumph but for Hitler's insistence. Irving writes:

Upstairs, she had denied incidentally that she made it [Triumph of the Will] for the [nazi] Party -- it was purely for herself...She also denied getting Party funding.

Perhaps more damning is the fact that she even met with Irving, given his own background.

Riefenstahl once said "Through my optimism I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life." What her life represented was anything but beauty.